Ina Garten-Inspired Vegetarian Lasagna

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

The layers are neat in the dish and a landslide on the plate. Nothing went wrong in the oven — it was cut too soon.

A lasagne coming out of the oven is a stack of hot liquids. The ricotta is loose, the sauce is thin, the melted cheese has no set. All three firm up as the temperature drops, and thirty minutes on the counter takes the dish from pourable to sliceable. It is the same principle as resting meat, and it is the single most skipped step in the recipe.

Cover it loosely, walk away, and cut it at forty minutes if you can bear it.

Bind the ricotta with an egg

Ricotta on its own has nothing holding it together and it slumps out from between the sheets. One beaten egg per 500 g sets it into a layer that stays where you put it. Season it hard, too — ricotta is bland and it is a third of the filling.

Vegetables go in roasted, never raw

Courgette, aubergine, peppers and mushrooms are mostly water, and raw layers release all of it into the dish. Roast them at 220°C until browned and shrunken first. You lose the water and gain the flavour that a vegetable lasagne otherwise lacks in the absence of meat.

Cover it for the first two thirds

Foil traps steam, which is what cooks the pasta sheets. Uncovered from the start, the top layer dries into leather before the middle is hot. Uncover at the end, when all that is left to do is brown the cheese.

Storing

Four days, and it slices far more cleanly on day two. It freezes well either baked or assembled raw — from frozen, 180°C for 90 minutes, covered for the first hour.