I received Rocco’s book a few days before my girl friends were coming down for the weekend.  One was planning on making her awesome Arroz con Pollo but another is vegetarian.  I assured Veggie Girl that I’d handle her meals and when I saw this recipe I thought “I can handle this!”

If your knife skills aren’t sous chef worthy I’d suggest investing in a mandolin (the kitchen kind, not the Tiny Tim kind).  I did my best to slice the vegetables 1/4″ thick but they weren’t very even.  More on why this is important later.

The oven I have came with the house and without an instruction manual.  I don’t broil much (ok, never) so I’m not quite sure how that works on this particular stove (ie, is that “storage compartment” really the broiler??).  So instead of setting it to broil I baked the vegetables at 450.  My new smoke detector has a love-hate relationship with our cooking and I managed to set it off even though nothing was burning.  I did manage to get the rest of the vegetables cooked regardless.

The assembly portion was quick & easy.  The ricotta didn’t seem to spread easily, but I was also in a bit of a rush.  I was up against the step-off of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in town.  I managed to get it together & let it sit while we checked out the pipes & drums.

Upon returning I cleaned the kitchen, drank some wine, and we waited for the the rest of our party to arrive.  It was a good couple of hours before the lasagna saw the inside of the oven but it’s one of the things I love about this dish: it can totally be prepared ahead of time.

I baked the lasagna and let it rest as instructed.  When I attempted to serve it I noticed that it hadn’t firmed up as expected and plated more like a thick stew than a lasagna.  We’re a pretty low maintenance group (and two bottles of wine into the evening) so the visual wasn’t important.  The flavors were there and more than made up for the poor plating.

After discussing with the Boyfriend Chef it was determined that the vegetables were probably too thick and even though I baked them they probably had too much moisture, which can be the downfall of any lasagna.

There wasn’t much in the way of leftovers but they were delicious two days later.  I would definitely make this again but either use a mandolin or have the BF Chef cut the vegetables for me.

The recipe is on page 171.