I love a challenge.

So recently I posted up about a special meal I made for one of my friends who has been a huge help through this quarantine.

This week I'm doing it again for my favorite human. But this one has a ton of food restrictions, so it became quite the challenge. And I love a challenge, because when you can't have meat, gluten, or soy.... can you enjoy a classic Italian dinner?

Let's find out.

A day ahead of time...
So, we have this long running gag in my friends circle of "Danger Cheese." It's super friendly to some friends, but can send other to the ER. It's a cashew based cheese, and today I'm making a Ricotta version.

It starts with soaking 1.5 cups raw cashews in water until they're good and soft. It's reccomended to do this for 2-3 hours with cold water. You can use hot water for 5-10 minutes, but it doesn't come out the same. And I wanted to save some texture because this is Ricotta, not the nacho queso that we'd normally be having.

After the soaking, I drained them and added back half a cup of fresh water, a wedge of raw onion, some salt, and a bunch of yeast extract. It calls for nutritional yeast, but I have this and it works better. Yay food science.

Then just blend it all in a food processor or blender until you get the texture you want. It took my OG Ninja blender about a minute. Then I put it away in the fridge to get a good firm setup on it overnight.

Day of... Noon.
Panic. Are those gluten-free, soy-free lasagna noodles I bought no bake? Or do I need to boil them first? Crap, I forgot. And I have to work this morning first. Ummm...... they're no bake, I'm fine.

2:00pm (and I stop tracking time after this.)
Time to start slicing veggies.

So, it's not enough to just make a meal that meets your basic requirements, it still has to taste good and be fulfilling. Sure, I could just swap my sausage or ground beef with a tasty Beyond Meat equivalent. But for someone who is used to lots of veggies in their food, we need to raise the bar.
So one layer will be a sauteed squash, zucchini, mushrooms, peppers, and just a touch of onion.

I took lots of pretty pictures of sliced veggies. Here, look.

The order in which you add the veggies to the sautee pan makes a big difference here. Onions and peppers can take a lot of abuse. Mushrooms are soft and cook quickly. So throw a little vegetable oil in the pan and get it warmed up. It should just be starting to run like water when you add the onions and peppers. Give them 5 minutes. Remember that it takes a while to caramelize the onions, and that's not even our goal here.

Next add the squash and zucchini. They'll also need some time, but not as much as the onion and peppers. Keep an eye on it and keep it moving so nothing burns. When you can just start to see through the squash, add the mushrooms. If you're using cast iron you can even turn off the heat here, there will be enough in the pan to finish the mushrooms. The little red bits are from liquid I stole out of the tomato sauce.

Now we can build our lasagna.

I started with a very small amount of sauce in the bottom of the pan, then the first layer of noodles. just a little more on top so the noodles don't dry out too much on the bottom before adding the veggies. I got all of them into this layer.

Then i made little splats of the cashew ricotta on top of this. I put another layer of noodles right into this, and laid down a thick layer of sauce so it filled in some of the gaps.

For the "meat" portion, I had a package of Beyond Hot Italian Sausages, which were a great addition. They're pretty tasty on their own. Then topped it off with some diced tomatoes and an entire bag of GF/SF Mozzarella.
Cover it with foil and bake it at 425F for 45 minutes, then take the foil off and hit it at 450F for 10-15 more and done!

It's a big, heavy meal. I probably should have at least wet the pasta, or even par-boiled it to make it work just a little better, it fought with me a bit while I was building it. But all in all, it came out fine and I had happy friends.