Gluten & Dairy Free Lasagna

As a young kid, I spent a good bit of time in the kitchen with my Italian mother. I’d also hang out in the kitchen of my super Italian grandmother when we went to visit her.   Loads of delicious memories, smiles and happiness in that kitchen for sure!

All of my grandparents were straight off the boat from Italy and cooked amazing traditional Italian food. So this is an area I feel I know pretty well.

I took a traditional Italian dish and modified it pretty significantly to make it ultra healthy and supportive to the healing of the body, and the exhilaration of the taste buds.  This is not something that you should eat every day but it’s certainly something you can enjoy during holidays and other festive occasions.

This is a gluten and dairy free lasagna that is loaded with antioxidants from a tremendous amount of vegetables. It is crazy delicious! I did a taste test on my family and everyone’s eyes rolled into the back of their head as they took a bite….. A definite sign of approval in my house…..LOL.

I hope you enjoy! Leave comments below 🙂

Ingredients:

1.  5 cloves of organic garlic diced
2.  6 stalks of asparagus chopped
3.  One bag of frozen organic chopped kale
4.  2 tablespoons of avacado oil refined for high heat
5.  One organic green zucchini chopped
6.  One organic yellow squash chopped
7.  One pound of organic Turkey sausage
8.  2 jars of organic tomato sauce
9.  One Box of organic Brown rice pasta.

Directions:

1.  Boil your water and prepare your lasagna noodles as directed on the Box.  You’ll be preparing the rest of the ingredients while the lasagna noodles are cooking.   If they finish cooking before the rest of your ingredients, make sure to remove them from the water and place them somewhere safe like on a dish or large serving plate.
2.   I personally use the Xtrema ceramic cookware and I like to use the wok for the next part of this recipe.
3.   Brown the sausage in the wok then drain the oil and remove the sausage from the wok.
4.  Place the avocado oil into the wok and heat oil over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot, add your garlic. Saute the garlic until it becomes very aromatic. Make sure not to burn or brown the garlic or else it will ruin the flavor of the dish.
5.   Lower the heat to a temperature between medium and medium high.
6.   Add your chopped green zucchini squash and yellow squash to the wok. As you saute, you might see some of the water come out of squash. You want this to occur or else it will make your lasagna dish water logged and less flavorful.
7.   Now add the asparagus and frozen kale.  Saute all these ingredients together until they are cooked slightly more than Al dente.
8.  Add your sausage back in to the walk with the rest of the ingredients.
9.  Add, approximately, 1/2 a jar of the organic tomato sauce.   Stir the sauce into your mixture and turn off the heat.
10.   Add enough to make the sauce to the bottom of your glass lasagna baking dish to cover the bottom of the dish. Make sure to use just enough, if you use too much, it will make your lasagna noodles soggy.
11.   At the bottom of your glass lasagna dish lay3 lasagna noodles.
12.   Place about a tablespoon of pasta sauce along each lasagna noodle. You just want to wet it very slightly with your sauce.
13.  Place about 1 to 2 large serving spoons of your sauteed mixture along each lasagna noodle.  This should result in all noodles being covered by approximately 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch high of your mixture.
14.  Layer your next 3 lasagna noodles on top of your sauteed mixture and repeat step 13 above. Continue this process until all lasagna noodles have been used.
15.  On your last layer put only sauce on top of your lasagna noodles. Make sure they are covered fairly well with sauce as this lasagna has no cheese in the sauce will start to dry up during the cooking process.
16.  Place this dish covered with aluminum foil in the oven at 350ﾟ for 15 minutes.  After the 1st 15 minutes of cooking has been completed, remove the aluminum foil and cook uncovered for an additional 15 minutes. Some ovens will require you to cook this dish up to 45 minutes. Just put your time in half between covered and uncovered.