meatless monday lasagne

today i am cooking dinner and have decided to make one of my favorites, lasagne. it has been about 3 months since i last made it so this is going to be good. each time i make it a little different and tonight is no exception. here are my ingredients to begin with. they are sufficient for 3 people:

16 lasagne plates
350 g cottage cheese
200 g grated edamer cheese
2 dl tomato paprika paste
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium red onion
10 cloves garlic
1 red and 1 green paprika
1 carrot
2 tsp each oregano, basil and garden fresh thyme
1 tsp each black pepper, nutmeg, kashmiri chili powder and salt
1/3 cup boiling water

first i prepared the veggies

heated up an iron skillet with the bottom covered with olive oil. when it was warm i put in the chili powder and black pepper, stirred them and let them sizzle for at least a minute. the spices are now infused in the oil which makes them more flavorful and potent.

then i added the herbs, nutmeg, onion and garlic. stirred, lowered the heat to medium and cooked for about 5 minutes.

this gives the onion and garlic longer cooking time than the other veggies, i just think it tastes better this way.

when the onion was pretty much cooked i added the paprika and carrot and stirred well so they were coated in the oil

and cooked for another few minutes, stirring occasionally

before the carrots were soft i added the tomato-paprika paste. this was a new ingredient for me. i added a cup of water, stirred well and let it cook for at least 5 minutes more.

meanwhile, i grated the edamer cheese

i was not sure what to expect so i tasted the sauce. it was very flavorful and tasty but a little sour. i considered adding some sweet chili sauce but it was spicy enough already so i went with tahini (as usual) to make it more creamy and full-bodied

then a little molasses to sweeten it. and a pinch of salt. another couple of minutes cooking and the sauce was ready,

i gathered the sauce, grated cheese, cottage cheese and lasagne plates together, ready to assemble together. but first i turned on the oven to 200 C or 400 F.

first i poured a couple of Tbsp boiling water into the baking pan because the plates need to absorb a lot of moisture from the sauce but there is none at the bottom. then i lined the bottom of the pan with the plates, forming them to fit. and spread some sauce over them

then i added about 1/3 of the cottage cheese and spread that out

then spread out about 1/3 of the grated cheese on top

then repeated with the plates and sauce

then the cottage cheese.

and grated cheese etc.. altogether i made 4 layers of plates, sauce and grated cheese, with just little cheese on the top. there were 3 layers of cottage cheese.

i poured a little boiling water in the skillet, rinsed the sauce left in it and poured this over everything to keep it moist.

it is ready to go in the hot oven

now i have time to clean up a bit and prepare the sweet peas i picked in the garden earlier. the pods are edible but they have strings that need to be removed before cooking.

just enough for a little side dish

they cook fast. only a couple of minutes in about 1 cm or 1/2 inch of water with a lid on the pan.

after 25 minutes the lasagne was ready.

i quickly make some kind of 'decorative presentation' using peas, avocado, cherry tomatoes and fresh parsley. then the lasagne and dinner was served.

i know i gotta work on my decorating the plate but i can assure you that there were nothing but compliments on the meal.