The best food is usually something you make yourself at home. And especially if you can’t always find some products fresh, it’s a good idea to make them yourself. I like to make pasta myself, so a pasta machine really comes in handy for me. Today I give you my ultimate comfort food recipe with this fresh lasagna!
Ingredients
- 1 small cauliflower
- marinara sauce (you can find the recipe here http://casadelavida.nl/en/marinara-sauce/)
- salt
- pepper
- grated cheese (I usually use grated mozzarella or emmenthal)
- olive oil
- garlic powder
lasagna sheets
- 300 gr flour
- 3 eggs
Bechamel
- 70 gr butter
- 700 ml milk
- 70 gr flour
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Preparation
First make the marinara sauce. You can of course also use sauce from a jar, but then the taste will be different! Make the lasagna sheets by mixing the eggs and flour in a bowl and kneading this into a nice dough that is slightly hard but still elastic. Form the dough into a ball, wrap plastic around it and let the dough rest in the fridge for at least an hour. That will give you time to make the bechamel sauce.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the flour, stirring with a fork, until the flour and butter combine to form a yellow paste. Gradually add the milk, stirring everything well until it becomes a smooth mixture. It should definitely not be too thin or too thick. A wooden spoon should be able to stand upright in it for a while.
Now add the salt, pepper and nutmeg. Crush the garlic and add that too. Keep stirring. If the sauce is too thin, let it thicken on a higher heat for a minute. But be careful! The sauce can burn quickly! Let it sit for a while and taste. Add more of the spices to taste. You should have quite a lot of bechamel!
Meanwhile, cut the cauliflower into small florets. Fry these florets in batches in plenty of olive oil, salt, pepper and a little garlic powder until lightly browned, then let them rest for a while.
Use a pastry cutter to divide the pasta dough ball into smaller pieces. Knead these pieces well, and run them through your pasta machine until each piece of dough becomes a thin sheet of dough that fits in your oven dish. If your sheets come out smaller, you can use two sheets per layer. Repeat this process until you have enough sheets. Sprinkle some flour over and between the sheets as you work so they don’t stick together.
Now preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Pour a layer of bechamel into your baking dish. Place a sheet of pasta on top, then a layer of marinara. Then again bechamel, a layer of fried cauliflower and then again marinara sauce and bechamel and some grated cheese.
Place another sheet on top of this and repeat the previous step. You may have leftover sauce to make a second small lasagna. On the last (top) sheet, spread marinara sauce and bechamel, some salt and pepper and grated cheese. Place your lasagna in the oven for at least 25 minutes.
The cheese on top should be nicely melted and still crispy. The cauliflower will definitely be done after 25 minutes, but if you want you can leave the lasagna in the oven for 5 minutes longer. It just makes it tastier! Let the lasagna cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Voilà, a lasagna like you’ve never tried it before!
The result
We are really pasta geeks in our house, but this recipe actually originated from another cauliflower recipe and now we make this cauliflower lasagna at least once or twice a month! And I will have to make it again to photograph the inside! Enjoy your meal, friends!
Have you tried this recipe? I’d love to hear from you if you have any photos or comments. I share the nicest photos of readers on Instagram, if you’ll allow me to.
