Saturday night I had 2 new Iron Chef friends enter the kitchen. As they are vegetarian I had to consult the vegetarian section of library! I tried to find something fairly easy for us to do and then pop in the over so we could prepare dessert as it cooked. I did want to try a vegetarian lasagne recipe I have filed away to try with them but it had about 50 different ingredients and I did not have time to get them all!

So Iron Chef David, Iron Chef Jason and myself made a simple recipe from Donna Hay. The recipe calls for capers but not being a huge fan of them we left them out. Looking back on it all, the capers would have added that saltiness we were missing.

We all worked together to layer the lasagne. As I mentioned before it did lack some saltiness. As we were eating we all started suggesting ingredients it was missing, then we concluded the quick fix was tomato sauce! And it was just what it needed. I didn't think we would finish it all, but by the end of the night there were no leftovers!

So we did rather well! I am looking forward to my vegetarian iron chef's coming back for more vegetarian cooking!


4 fresh lasagne sheets (200g)
700g low-fat ricotta
2 tablespoons chopped capers
1/2 cup milk sea salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
200g baby spinach leaves
8 roma tomatoes, thickly sliced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup baby basil leaves
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Cook the lasagne sheets in a large pan of boiling water for 3 minutes or until just tender. Drain and lay the lasagne sheets out flat on non-stick baking paper.

2. Combine the ricotta, capers, milk, salt and pepper in a bowl.

3. Place a lasagne sheet in the base of an 18 x 38cm ovenproof dish. Top with half of the spinach leaves then spread with half of the ricotta mixture. Top with another lasagne sheet and half of the tomato slices. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the vinegar and scatter over half of the basil leaves. Repeat the layers, finishing with a layer of tomatoes, and scatter the cheeses over the top.

4. Bake for 40 minutes or until cooking through.

Serves 6-8