Slow cook Spinach tofu lasagna!

Slow cook Tofu and spinach Lasagna

Ingredients:

·         Cauldron Tofu, crumbled (pictured below)

·         ½ cup nutritional yeast

·         1 tbsp lemon juice

·         1 tbsp olive oil

·         1 tbsp garlic powder

·         ¼ tsp salt and pepper

·         Spinach (Fresh, chopped or ½ a can of tinned spinach or frozen-chopped spinach)

·         Passata Tomato Sauce

·         1 tbsp dried Italian herbs 

·         Dried pasta sheets (broken into long pieces) Gluten free can also be used.

·         20g Cheezly (or other vegan cheese, grated)

This is the best tofu to make a ricotta, available at most supermarkets. 

Nutritional yeast, available at health food shops. Nutty cheesy flavour. 

Tips: 

·         Slow cookers do not lose water or reduce, so don’t add too much water to this recipe. The pasta will absorb some of the liquid from the tofu and tomato sauce.

·         Season the tofu to taste, but I find that because slow cookers don’t reduce and intensify flavour, you may need to over season the food to start. Otherwise add more salt as you plate the lasagne. 

·         If you don’t have a slow cooker you can make this in the oven, I suggest switching to Cannelloni tubes and using a blunt knife to fill the tubes, arranging in an oven dish and layering on tomato sauce, baking with foil to keep moisture in the dish.  

Method:

First in a large bowl mix together the ingredients to make the tofu Ricotta.

Then in the slow cooker, layer, first the tomato sauce, then broken up pieces of lasagna sheets, aim that not too much is overlapping.  

Then add a thick layer of the Tofu Ricotta, you should be aiming for only 3 layers of pasta, two layers of tofu. 

On top of that Tofu, layer pasta, more tofu, and then last layer should be pasta and then top that with the tomato sauce. Ensure the sauce covers all the pasta evenly; any pasta not covered will dry out and become overly crunchy. 

In the last 10 minutes of the cook, grate the cheese on top, you can allow some of the steam to escape while you do this. If making this in the oven i suggest adding a lot more liquid to the top, you could even make a cheese style sauce rather than just grating cheese. Equally if you use a lot of juicy tomato you can just grate vegan cheese on top. 

The slow cooker should cook this in between 1.5-3 hours depending on the setting (low or high) and the power of your slow cooker. Once the pasta is soft the dish is cooked. 

 I've also made this in the oven as both a lasagna and cannelloni. 

Sorry for the terrible photos! I make this recipe so often, I forget to photograph it. 

Looking for more tofu inspiration?

Try my marinated recipe:

http://dadavegan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/vegan-mofo-1st-marinated-tofu.html