[Zucchini & Sausage Lasagna] The easiest lasagna with lots of fresh vegetables

What is your favourite comfort food?

Out of all sorts of comfort food out there, mine is lasagna, especially cheesy lasagna with lots of vegetables. Probably it's not an usual pick for a comfort food. But, a big dish of bubbly mozzarella cheese on top of  rich sauce and ingredients comfort me immensely :) Melting cheese and wonderfully overcooked lasagna noodle stacked with delicious tomato sauce, seasoned pork or beef, and vegetables of my choice, satisfy both my pizza and pasta cravings at the same time! As I love pizza and pasta, for me, lasagna is a kind of all-in-one treat. And as you might have seen my lasagna recipes, my lasagnas are very easy to make, since you don't need to cook noodles. You use dry lasagna noodles right away.

I make different lasagnas with various ingredients. Most combinations taste good. But, I find pork sausage and zucchini are extraordinarily fit for each other, to bring up a great synergy of taste. Sausage's somewhat overly rich flavour is neutralized by zucchini while zucchini absorbs the flavour of sausage and tomato sauce to become some scrumptious super vegetables. If you like lasagna, I'm sure you would love this easy-to-make lasagna. Even if you are not a big fan of lasagna, you will still like this deliciously nutritious lasagna dish. :)

Here goes the recipe.

Ingredients

  

1 (or 1 + 1/2) zucchini

3 Italian sausage links, casings removed

1 medium onion, chopped

2 + 1/2 cup tomato sauce, homemade or store bought

(I always make tomato sauce using diced tomato cans. 

You can see my easy tomato sauce recipe here)

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 cups partly skimmed cottage cheese

9 dry lasagna noodles

2 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

1 tablespoon olive oil

* You don't need to use extra salt as tomato sauce, sausage,

and cheese are already salty enough.

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Remove casings from sausages.

Shred mozzarella.

3. Slice zucchini and quarter the zucchini disks.

4. Slice onion and cut into 3 parts.

5. Heat a skillet and add 2-3 tablespoons olive oil. 

6. Add zucchini and onion. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until onion becomes transparent.

 Put the cooked vegetables aside to cool down a bit. 

7. Heat the pan and add sausages, crumble with potato masher, cook until sausage is pink anymore.

Then, add 1 + 1/2 cups of tomato sauce and cook for another 4- 5 minutes so that the sauce will be thoroughly heated.

8. Meanwhile, add cooked vegetables to the cottage cheese and mix well.

Now, all the sauces are ready to be stacked.

9. Spread 1/2 cup sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish.

10. Layer 3 dry noodles.

11. Cover noodles with sausage mixtures and 1/3 of cottage cheese mixture.

12. Repeat layers two more times. (noodles -> sausage mixture -> cottage cheese mixture)

13. Add the last 3 noodles and top with the last 1/2 cup tomato sauce, and then mozzarella cheese.

14. Tent the baking dish with aluminium foil and bake about 35 minutes.

15. Then, uncover and bake another 10-15 minutes.

I switched it to broiling mode and broil the top for 1-2 minutes to brown the cheese. But, it's just an option.

Let stand 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

It's really easy, isn't it? :)

Enjoy!

Zucchini & Sausage Lasagna