Rotolini di Lasagne (Lasagne Rolls)
Lasagne pasta is such a versatile ingredient. Infinite possibilities of filling choices, shapes, baking or just boiling methods, a heaven for someone like me who loves to explore. So I stumbled, happily jumping through the recipe forest online, over the possibility of forming rolls with the lasagne sheets. And here I am, presenting you now my version of this beautiful serving method.
This recipe includes normal and common vegetarian lasagne vegetables such as zucchini, celery and carrot, beside a freshly made tomato sauce from blended ripe tomatos. For the filling, I am using roasted aubergines and a mix of a oat milk béchamel and my vegan mozzarella sauce. I realized, that bringing my homemade oat milk to a boil, I can actually make something very thickened without adding any thicking agent to it … While in other recipes this is not so useful, I used exactly this spontaneously discovered characteristic for a good purpose here. I hope you enjoy these Vegan Lasagne rolls!
What do we need to make my Rotolini di Lasagne vegani?
- Aubergine – I just needed maximum half of an aubergine that I cut in small cubes and roasted in a few tablespoons of oil.
- Béchamel sauce filling – here I used the thickening ability of my homemade oat milk when heated up. First, I brown 4 tbsp of flour mixed with 4 tbsp of oil, then I add a mix of one glass of oat milk, half of a tablespoon of tapioca starch and some salt. This ends up thickening nicely, which makes it easy to fill the rolls by hand.
- Lemon zest – this gives the béchamel as well as the tomato-veggie-sauce a fine, mediterranean twist. It is optional, because I know that not in every country you are blessed of having organically grown lemons all year round, even though I highly recommend adding some!
- Some vegetables of your choice. I used half of a zucchini, cut in cubes, one carrot, peeled and cut in tiny cubes and a quarter of a celery stalk, deprived from the tiny hair and cut in small pieces. This I sautée, before I add
- Tomato pulp – I simply pureed 2 ripe tomatos with my immersion blender. I also added about half a cup of a storebought tomato purée.
- Herbs – fresh herbs as well as dried herbs make the blend perfect.
- Lasagne sheets – see that you buy egg-less pasta sheets!
- The common salt and pepper to taste, sprinkled on top with some chopped herbs before serving.
Rotolini di Lasagne (Lasagne Rolls)
We have made a simple vegetarian Lasagne so often in our lives … until I realised that I can actually use the lasagne sheets to make rolls too 🙂 Voilà, my first try. I hope you like it as much as we did!
Ingredients
- 2 medium to big ripe tomatos
- 1,5 small to medium carrots
- 1/4 celery stalk
- 1/2 medium zucchini
- 1/2 cup tomato sauce/purée
- 2 tsp lemon zest optional, but highly recommended!
- 1 handful fresh herbs
- 1/2 aubergine
- 1/2 tbsp tapioca starch if your store does not sell any, you can try to use 2 tbsp cornstarch instead.
- 1 cup homemade oat milk see instructions in my recipe – link below in the notes!
- 1 tsp nutritional yeast optional
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp oil
- 4 tbsp flour
- 6 egg-less lasagne sheets or better 8, in case one or two should break during the cooking or preparing process
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
Instructions
For the tomato vegetable sauce
- Cut the tomatos in cubes. Puree the tomatos and set aside.
- Peel and grate the carrots. Remove the thin hairs from the celery stalk and cut the celery in tiny pieces. Cut the zucchini in small cubes or this stripes. Finely chop half of the herbs.
- In a pot, heat 2 tbsp of oil. Add the carrots and celery. Sautée for approximately 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the zucchini and sautée for 2 minutes. Add the tomato pulp, the tomato purée, 1/3 of the lemon zest, season with salt and pepper and let the sauce simmer until the vegetables are tender, but not mashy.
For the filling
- In the meantime, dice the aubergine and roast the cubes in 2-3 tbsp oil until brown on each side. Set aside.
- Mix the tapioca starch, the oat milk, the nutritional yeast (optional), the rest of the lemon zest and the salt in a bowl.
- Mix the flour and the oil, transfer the mixture to a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Let it simmer for 1-2 minutes – see that the flour doesn't burn!
- Add the milk-mixture, whisk constantly. It will thicken very fast! As soon as it has a chewy texture, take off the heat.Add the aubergine cubes, mix together, and set aside.
Boiling the pasta
- Bring abundant water, nicely salted, to a boil.Add 3 tbsp of oil to the water (this should prevent the sheets from sticking together!). Make a whirl, add the lasagne sheets one by one and cook them until al dente (approximately 8 minutes). I recommend to check with a spatula or a spoon regularily if the sheets are sticking together.
- Drain the pasta (don't rinse, we want to eat the rolls warm!), and use immediately for filling!
Assemble
- Place one of the sheets on a plate. Fill with 1/6 of the béchamel-aubergine-mixture, fold one side over the filling, then roll in. Place the roll on one of 2 serving plates. Repeat this procedure with all the other 5 sheets, placing 3 on one serving plate, the other 3 on the other one.
- Spread the sauce nicely on the rolls, sprinkle each portion with chopped herbs, pepper and salt.Optionally you can sprinkle a little olive oil on top.
Notes
Here you find the instructions to make Homemade Oat Milk. For this recipe, you will need to make only half!