I came home from the gym one evening just to find a beautiful plate of lasagna waiting for me. My husband was inspired that night. He comes from an Italian family and is truly an amazing cook. He learned everything he knows from his Momma whom is even more amazing in the kitchen. My mother-in-law makes a more authentic lasagna than what you would find in most Italian restaurants. The predominant cheese that she uses in her recipe is ricotta, which is similar to cottage cheese in consistency but much yummier!
Since we are still mostly a grain and dairy free family, lasagna used to be off limits for us. During our trip to Colorado last spring, our good friend introduced us to Cappello’s gluten and grain-free lasagna noodles. A few weeks later we found them in our new Whole Foods! What a joy! But the noodles still sat in the freezer for a little while. We just couldn’t figure out how to fill it since we are dairy-free and couldn’t use vegan cheese (due to some of the sketchy ingredients contained in them). So, my brilliant husband looked through the fridge and saw we had a whole head of cauliflower as well as a large yellow squash from our own garden. A light bulb went off!
We eat a lot of mashed cauliflower in place of potatoes so he thought maybe he could get the mash cauliflower to taste like the ricotta cheese in his mother’s recipe! It was also a no-brainer to use spirilized squash to add texture to the dish. With a little experimenting here is what he came up with: this delicious Grain and Dairy Free Lasagna!
Grain and Dairy Free Lasagna
In this recipe we used shredded chicken (because my mom was in town and she does not eat red meat) but feel free to use ground beef. We have tried it and it also tastes amazing! For the pasta sauce you can make your own, but we used Dave's Organic Hearty Marinara pasta sauce. Bone broth is optional and you can always use our Low Histamine Bone Broth recipe.
Ingredients
- Cappello's Lasagna Noodles - 1 1/2 12oz packages
- Sauce
- Bone Broth - 1/3 cup (optional)
- Dave's Gourmet Organic - 1 1/2 25oz jars
- Squash Filling
- Yellow squash - 1 large sliced or spirilized
- Ghee - 2 Tbsp
- Garlic salt - 2 tsp
- Onion powder - 2 tsp
- Chicken Filling
- Chicken breast - 2 large cooked and shredded (approx. 2 lbs)
- Garlic - 3 cloves minced
- Ghee - 2 Tbsp
- Sea salt - 1 tsp
- Black Pepper - 1/2 tsp
- Italian seasoning - 1 Tbsp
- Sauce
- Cauliflower Filling (Faux Ricotta Cheese)
- Cauliflower - 1 large head chopped
- Nutritional Yeast - 2 Tbsp
- Ghee - 3 Tbsp
- Garlic - 3 cloves
- Sea salt - 2 tsp
- Black Pepper - 1/2 tsp
- Coconut milk (full fat) - 1 13oz can (Native Forest Organic brand)
- Sauce - 1/4 cup
Instructions
Sauce:
- In a sauce pan heat the marinara sauce with the bone broth and reserve.
Squash Filling:
- Use a peeler tool to remove the yellow skin of the squash and cut off both of the rounded ends.
- Place into spiralizer tool and cut into spaghetti noodles. (note: you can just use squash slices if you don't have a spiralizer tool. Our kids just love squash or zucchini squash spiralized noodles so we incorporate those for variety.)
- Place these noodles in a pile on a paper towel and sprinkle with garlic salt and onion powder.
- In a large pan, heat up the ghee and throw in the squash noodles and toss over heat for about 3 minutes, then remove them from the heat.
Chicken Filling:
- Fill a pot with enough water to cover the chicken. Bring it to a boil and cook for 15-20 minutes.
- Once cooked, shred it using a couple forks.
- Pour the ghee into a large sauce pan and heat on medium.
- Throw in the minced garlic sauce until slightly brown.
- Place the shredded chicken in the pan along with the salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and marinara sauce. Mix thoroughly and then turn off the heat and cover with a lid.
Cauliflower Filling (Faux Ricotta Cheese):
- Break the cauliflower up into smaller chunks and steam it thoroughly along with the garlic cloves. (until very soft)
- Place cauliflower and garlic into a food processor and add in the nutritional yeast, ghee, salt, pepper, coconut milk and marinara sauce. Puree fully.
Lasagna:
- Pre-heat oven to 375F.
- The Cappello's lasagna noodles don't require cooking. So simply grease the bottom of the lasagna pan with some ghee and then layer in a bottom covering of lasagna noodles.
- Take the shredded chicken filling and cover the bottom layer of lasagna noodles.
- Ladle over a thin covering of marinara sauce onto the shredded chicken and then sprinkle nutritional yeast over the sauce.
- Put on another layer of lasagna noodles and then cover that layer with the spiralized squash you prepared.
- Ladle over a thin covering of marinara sauce onto the squash and then sprinkle with nutritional yeast.
- Put on another layer of lasagna noodles and then cover them with the cauliflower filling you prepared.
- Ladle over a thin covering of marinara sauce and then sprinkle with nutritional yeast.
- Put on the final layer of lasagna noodles and then ladle over a thin layer of marinara sauce.
- Sprinkle one last time with nutritional yeast and then place in the oven.
- Bake for 15 minutes.
- Remove from oven and serve. Ladle remaining marinara sauce over each plated piece of the lasagna.
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This is an amazing recipe except at current suggested garlic and salt amounts it was waaaay too salty and so garlicky (and we love garlic) we could hardly eat it and had to throw much of it away. Cutting in half all the garlic ingredients throughout the entire recipe along with halving the salt and nutritional yeast measurements and using a no salt added bone broth really helped. Also be sure to buy a really large head of cauliflower otherwise at the current coconut milk amount it was too mushy and not “ricotta cheese” like. Also draining the cauliflower really well and letting it cool to room temperature before processing cuts down on the moisture level too. With some measurement adjustments this is a fantastic dish I make over and over again!!! BTW I also use 2 entire boxes of Capello’s lasagna sheets, 2 full jars of sauce and only 1/2 cup of bone broth but I’m sure with the original recipe amounts it would be fine but we enjoy a bit more sauce and pasta plus no partially used items left over 🙂 You’ll just need to cook the dish maybe 15-20 minutes longer depending on your oven and pan and preference etc.
Thanks so much for the suggestions! I am so glad you enjoyed it.