Recipe: Basic Tofu Lasagna

I have never in my life, made a lasagna before, let alone a vegan one. Thankfully, this recipe is very easy to follow and the result was delicious! I found it in the book "The Everything Vegan Cookbook" - by Jolinda Hackett and Lorena Novak Bull.  It has a lot of easy to follow recipes, perfect for those of us who are either new to vegan cooking or cooking all together!

What you will need:

1 block of firm tofu (about 400g)
1 block of silken tofu (about 400g)
a quarter cup nutritional yeast (you can find this in health food shops)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp soy or tamari (I prefer tamari)
approx 2 teaspoons basil - fresh or dried, using less if dried
approx 3 tbsp parsley - fresh or dried , using less if dried
a pinch or two of salt
4 cups of vegan pasta sauce - I use  Paul Newman's Own: Classic Tomato Homestyle. Available in supermarkets. Any tomato based pasta sauce will do, so long as it doesn't have any cream or butter in it, really.
1 pack lasagna pasta sheets (check directions on pack as to whether they need to be presoaked or not.) As I am sensitive to gluten, I used gluten free ones which often can be found in supermarkets these days.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180c
In a large bowl, mash together the firm and the silken tofu, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, soy/tamari sauce, herbs and salt, until they are all combined and crumbly like ricotta cheese. At this stage, you can mix in additions, like sliced mushrooms.
Grab a lasagna pan and spread about two thirds of a cup of pasta sauce on the bottom of it and then add a layer of  pasta sheets.
Spread about half of the tofu mix on top of the noodles and follow that with another layer of sauce. Place a second layer or pasta sheets on top and follow with the remaining tofu mix and more sauce. Finish it off with a third layer of pasta sheets and the rest of the sauce.
If you like, you can add a bit of grated vegan cheese on the top. Cheezly is a good brand and is available from from PAWS .
Cover your masterpiece with some foil, pop into the oven and give it about 40-50 minutes to cook. basically, what you are looking for is the pasta too cook well enough so you can put a knife through it. I used non pre-soak lasagna sheets and found that the recipe in the book recommended only 25 minutes, which was nowhere near enough time.

 And here is the final product. Totally delicious and totally free of dairy and any other animal products. Yum!