Who knew that shredded carrots could be entirely exciting in pasta sauce??? Mario Batali, that’s who. In the last issue of Lucky Peach I came across one of his recipes for pasta sauce. To it, he adds shredded carrots, which give the sauce some fun texture and subtle carroty flavor. I had some zucchini and threw that in as well. I didn’t have time to make his sauce so I just mixed the shredded veggies into a bottled sauce. Give it a try!
I’ve had a box and a half of whole wheat lasagna noodles for some time now. They weren’t getting any younger just sittin’ there. The problem, or so I thought, was that I didn’t have any cheese. It turns out that cheese-less lasagna is pretty dang good. I had 2 small eggplants and some zucchini lying around as well so I used my mandolin and sliced them length-wise. With all fingers accounted for, I constructed the lasagna, layering the noodles with the eggplant and zucchini in between, just like I would if I had cheese on hand. And, I topped it off with sliced roma tomatoes.
It turned out fantastic. The creaminess of the eggplant isn’t exactly a perfect substitute, but I felt a little less guilty going for seconds knowing that I didn’t just eat my year’s allotment of saturated fats in one sitting. I also used a bottle of Trader Joe’s tomato basil marina that was in my pantry. Killing 2 birds with one stone – this is what I call spring cleaning.
Eat - Drink - Roam 