Healthy White Lasagna

Hearty. Creamy. Filling. Healthy. Low fat. 600 calories per PAN. Lasagna. Enough intro, let’s get to it.

You will love this. Pinky promise.

Ingredients:

• 340g cauliflower
• 100g brussels sprouts (any other vegetable would be nice, too)
• 510g zucchini, sliced into long flat noodles on a mandolin
• 100g zucchini, spiralized, for texture
• 100g eggplant, sliced
• 226g Cabot No Fat Cottage Cheese
• 50g onion
• 100g baby spinach
• 1.5tsp chicken base or vegetable base
• minced garlic, to taste (I use about 2 tsp)
• 45g Fat Free Mozzarella shredded cheese
• 1 link Nature’s Place Chicken Sausage in Roasted Garlic (optional, hubby likes it in his)
• 5g Parmesan topping
• Sprinkle of preferred Italian seasonings

Directions:

Heat oven to 375F.

Quarter the brussels sprouts and roast until golden on a sheet pan sprayed with oil of your choice. Set aside when done.

Place eggplant rounds on a cookie cooling sheet, on a cookie rack, and bake with brussels sprouts until tender and dry. It is VITAL that they be placed on a cookie sheet to elevate them. They will get squishy and nasty otherwise. Set aside.

White Sauce: Boil cauliflower until very soft. Place in blender with garlic, 1/2 cup of water, salt, pepper, and chicken/vegetable base. Blend until velvet in consistency. Set aside.

Fauxcotta (Who knew cottage cheese would be so reminiscent of Ricotta??): Place cottage cheese, salt, some garlic, and any desired seasonings, such as Italian seasonings, parsley, etc., in a small bowl. Blend with an immersion blender until it reaches the consistency of Ricotta cheese. Set aside.

While all this is happening, saute the diced onions. When they are done, wilt in the spinach. Set aside.

If you are choosing to add a meat/the sausage to your version, cut into small pieces.

Then, take an 8×8 or 9×9 pan and layer a set of flat zucchini noodles. Over them, spread some of each of the: sprouts, sausage, spiralized zucchini, fauxcotta, white sauce, etc. Then, in layer another set of the flat noodles in the opposite direction. Repeat until all ingredients have been used. Top with the shredded mozzarella.

Bake at 375 until cooked through. I recommend checking it a couple of times because the cottage cheese and zucchini will release some water. I’ve found it best to carefully drain some of this out of the side of the pan as it goes (be careful not to let any of the curds escape).

When it’s done baking, allow it to sit for a few minutes and drain again if needed. This is a dish that seems to work best reheated so it’s great to make in advance. I’ve got one prepped and ready to be reheated tonight for dinner 🙂 We’ve eaten it twice in one week, if that speaks to its deliciousness for you.

The nutrition on this is that the whole plan is 600 calories and contains hardly any fat, assuming you’ve used the optional sausage. Otherwise, it’s only 530 for the entire pan.

Eggplant Lasagna (low calorie, low fat)

Ever since our recent trip to the Dominican Republic where it was almost impossible not to be served anything with eggplant in it, we’ve been on an eggplant kick! We both used to seriously dislike it at best. But now, oh baby! When it’s done right and/or allows us to eat foods that are typically full of fat and calories in a healthy way, it’s as right as rain. And this was definitely delicious.

Hot and melty

Because I’ve calculated this for nutritional needs, the ingredients and amounts can be fairly specific, but if you aren’t counting every little thing, substitutions and eyeballing it is fine. It does take a fair bit of work and prep, so it’s not a fast meal for the night, but it can be frozen ahead of time and pulled out any night you don’t have time to cook. So let’s get to it!

Ingredients

600 grams eggplant (the better part of a large eggplant, minus the core)

70 grams onion (about 1/4 of a large onion)

160 grams portabello (2 large caps, de-stemmed and de-gilled)

250 grams zucchini (a medium zucchini)

226 grams Fiber One Lowfat Cottage Cheese (1 cup)

500 grams Classico Tomato & Basil red sauce (2 cups)

1 Al Fresco Italian Chicken Sausage

3 large handfuls of fresh baby spinach leaves

84 grams Lisanatti Almond Cheese “mozzarella style)

1 tsp olive or coconut oil

Minced garlic, salt, pepper, Italian herbs, to taste

Directions:

• Cut the eggplant into lasagna noodle shaped-pieces. I used a mandolin to ensure consistent thickness. I’d say the pieces were definitely under 1/4″ thick. You can use a knife if you have the time….but yuck.
• Place eggplant “noodles” between paper towels and sprinkle salt and italian spices onto them. Stack them together, give them several good presses and let them sit for 30 minutes to an hour.
• Once eggplant is done sweating out, place noodles on a cooling rack on a baking sheet. Spray very lightly with olive oil or pan spray and cook at 375 for 6 minutes. Set aside when done and turn oven down to 325.

Cooked and waiting for construction

• In a large skillet with olive oil, saute diced onion with minced garlic until translucent. Then add diced portabello. Cook for several minutes. Add some seasonings if you’d like, then add diced zucchini. Cover and cook until zucchini has lost its snap. Throw in several handfuls of spinach, stir around, and cover. Cook until spinach has wilted.
• Pour red sauce into skillet and incorporate ingredients.

• In a glass or metal bowl, place cottage cheese. Add Italian seasonings and/or garlic. Use an immersion blender and blend until it reaches the consistency of ricotta cheese (only a few seconds; this can be done in a blender if you do not own an immersion blender).

After blending with herbs, this was ricotta-esque heaven!

• Dice sausage.
• Finely shred the almond cheese and set aside.

• In an 8X8 baking pan, begin layering ingredients. You may need to cut the eggplant noodles to size. After first layer of noodles, spoon enough sauce to cover, follow with dollops of the cheese mix, spread out. If using sausage, sprinkle evenly over surface. Cover with another noodle layer and repeat process until everything is used up.Sprinkle surface with the almond mozzarella and sprinkle some more Italian herbs and salt and paper on top (this will help the almond cheese have even better flavor).

Building layers.

Smothered in healthy “cheese”

• Cover with foil and bake at 325 about 40 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Remove foil during the last few minutes to brown top slightly.

Pre-devouring.

The entire pan will have just under 950 calories and barely any fat. Each slice comes in at only 240 calories!