A light vegetarian lasagna without tomato sauce?

February 27, 2022 2:47 PM

My little family doesn’t eat (1) cooked tomatoes (toddler), (2) rich creamy white sauces (spouse) or (3) meat (me). Can I make a lasagna that all of us will eat?

We also don’t like very bland food.

We only eat our pasta with pesto, in case you’re wondering how we manage pasta dishes.

All cheese is fine though I usually halve them amount of cheese called for in most lasagna recipes.

Not looking for ravioli or tortellini as approximations.

posted by redlines to Food & Drink (24 answers total)

Chopped aubergine (eggplant) with an onion gravy style sauce (add pesto if you like) and mozzarella on top… ?
posted by Phanx at 2:56 PM on February 27, 2022

Hmmm... Butternut squash and other veggies can probably provide a good substitute, maybe some lentils. But I don't see a direct substitute for tomatoes. Maybe... mushroom and spinach?

Also, your toddler refuses ANY tomato? Not puree, not diced, not marinara?
posted by kschang at 2:59 PM on February 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

How about a butternut squash sauce? Looks like the search you want is vegan butternut squash lasagna. That should cover no tomatoes, no creamy sauce, no meat.
posted by scantee at 3:00 PM on February 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

In your shoes I’d make a mushroom ragù and layer that with cheese.
posted by slkinsey at 3:08 PM on February 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

Agree with kschang and scantee: butternut squash lasagna is a great choice. This recipe has been a consistent Thanksgiving hit for our family.
posted by thenewbrunette at 3:08 PM on February 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

i .. think recipes for the dish that meets these requirements will not be called lasagna.. maybe search for casseroles and ragu and what not but add in lasagna noodles
posted by elgee at 3:10 PM on February 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

I regularly swap out pureed roasted butternut squash or roasted sweet potato instead of tomato sauce in lasagna. I have also made lasagna with Quorn grounds but you could substitute diced roasted eggplant or mushroom for the meat.
posted by skye.dancer at 3:13 PM on February 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think "strata" might be a useful search term. This is the type of thing that might come up.
posted by humbug at 3:31 PM on February 27, 2022

I've made roasted red pepper sauce to substitute for tomato sauce in several pasta dishes.
posted by perhapses at 3:34 PM on February 27, 2022 [6 favorites]

I would do a baked pasta with pesto and butter-fried mushrooms and tons of cheese. Basically this delicious smitten kitchen baked pasta recipe - it’s not too creamy - but add pesto, make salty buttery sautéed mushrooms instead of meat, and consider using a more chunky pasta shape- with enough cheese, it can still cut into cubes. Nutritional yeast would also be good if you roll that way.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:14 PM on February 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I make this regularly (or a variation of it)-- it does contain pesto.
posted by oflinkey at 4:16 PM on February 27, 2022

Sorry- edit- that recipe uses a bechamel-- I am often too lazy and use a ricotta/egg mix.
posted by oflinkey at 4:19 PM on February 27, 2022

How about pesto, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers?
posted by hungrytiger at 5:16 PM on February 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I mean, pesto lasagna is already a thing. Generally does have a lot of cheese, but you could try it with less. I like it better with thin fresh pasta than with the thick dried kind.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:32 PM on February 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've had very good butternut squash lasagna; try this recipe.
posted by Jeanne at 6:28 PM on February 27, 2022

This recipe gets you remarkably close, but it is pretty creamy. Really delicious though! You could cut the mascarpone and basically have what you're looking for, I think?
posted by potrzebie at 9:36 PM on February 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

The other night I made a 'lasagne' using pumpkin layered with lasagne sheets, a mildly cheesy bechamel for some layers, with stock over half the layers. The bechamel was mostly onion, garlic, and spinach. It turned out nice.
posted by geek anachronism at 9:46 PM on February 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I had to forego tomatoes (cooked or raw) altogether for a few years due to severe acid reflux/GERD, and still have to limit my tomato consumption. My partner got creative with his cooking because I really, really missed tomatoey pasta and pizza sauces etc. One of the things that helped was sauces that were red enough fool the eye and trick me into feeling they were tomato-ish.

This recipe might work as a tomato sauce substitute for your lasagne: "Nomato" sauce featuring beets for colour. It'll already be sweet, because it contains carrots as well as beets, so instead of the orange juice they recommend in addition to the lemon, I'd just stick with straight lemon (if your toddler doesn't have acid restrictions) and make sure it's got enough salt.

The initial recipe uses ground meat, but further down it features some meatless variations that might be nice in your lasagne: lentils or a mushroom/lentil mixture.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:15 AM on February 28, 2022

I’d experiment with deeply roasted vegetables, first. Slice eggplant, peppers, zucchini, and mushrooms, toss with olive oil and salt and roast on a sheet pan in a single layer until thoroughly browned and scrumptious. Then, maybe make or buy two sauces, a pesto and an aioli. Maybe thin the pesto with some more olive oil. The aioli would give you a huge garlic punch and mimic the white sauce of a bechamel without being one at all. Then layer with your lasagna noodles, aioli, veggies, pesto, a bunch of romano or parmesan or whatever combination of hard aged cheeses you think would be good. Maybe some soft mozzarella? Maybe smoked mozz?? You could try a kale pesto or an arugula pesto, or do hazelnuts or almonds instead of the pine nuts, lots of opportunity to mix it up. And the vegetables could be different, but I’d stick with things that do good in slices, so probably not broccoli or asparagus… winter squashes make sense, golden beets would caramelize nicely… or you could do one vegetable, like mushroom only, or big slabs of peppers. I don’t know if the result would be “lasagna” but I do know I would chow down.
posted by Mizu at 3:14 AM on February 28, 2022

I beg you to consider the kale and mushroom lasagna in Six Seasons. It is so, so good -- not heavy at all, really flavorful, not watery (you cook down the mushrooms ahead of time so they don't weep into the dish). It meets all of your requirements.
posted by Bebo at 5:06 AM on February 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Since lasagna dates all the way back to roman times, and the tomato only arrived in Europe in the 15th century, there is no problem with making a dish without tomatoes.

I think I would try a dish of cannelloni stuffed with ricotta and spinach, covered with a sauce made with onions, garlic, mushrooms and perhaps red bell peppers, and baked in the oven like a lasagna, rather than the same ingredients made as a lasagna. For some reason, the exact same ingredients taste different to me in the two different recipes, and better in the cannelloni version.

Kenji Lopez-Alt has a spinach lasagna with a bit of bechamel sauce in it, so it might be too much for your husband, depending on why he doesn't like creamy sauces.

I made a vegan spinach and mushroom sauce for stuffing buckwheat crêpes/ galletes, where I used oat milk mixed with vegetable stock instead of milk and vegan "butter" instead of butter for a vegan bechamel/velouté. It would work very well in a lasagna like Kenji's. It is lighter than a normal bechamel.
posted by mumimor at 6:11 AM on February 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I am personally a fan of cashews; you could probably blend some cashews with pesto and vegetable/mushroom stock, to make for a nice sauce.
posted by spinifex23 at 11:01 AM on February 28, 2022

Just a thought: would your toddler mind a tablespoonful of tomato passata or puré in an eggplant or mushroom "bolognese"? Because when I make it, I don't use a whole can of tomatoes, just a couple of tablespoonfuls, as in the original (meat) Bolognese recipe. The tomato adds umami and both sweetness and acid to something that might otherwise be mostly bland, but you don't see or notice it.
posted by mumimor at 11:07 AM on February 28, 2022

Could a roasted red pepper puree work, possibly with other roasted vegetables thrown in to the mix? Something like this recipe from Fine Cooking?

(Now I kind of want to try this myself!)
posted by urbanlenny at 11:25 AM on February 28, 2022