Jump past story time and stack some stuff instead…

While I was busy fighting falling down into an unconscious stupor at work Saturday night (I ate a Grilled Peanut Butter and Jalapeno Sandwich around 2am Saturday morning at my favorite PBJ+J bar so that’s telling), I’m pretty sure I started hallucinating about beets. The part of my brain that is usually reserved for forming complete sentences and remembering how to tell women to buy more clothes was officially preoccupied with slices of various things. Golden beets. Red beets. Tomatoes. One slice on top of another. Stacking. Stacking. Stacking. My eyes glazed over, I’m sure. Words were coming out of my mouth in the wrong order but my receipt paper grocery list was forming just right.

When I looked down at what I wrote, everything made sense again.

A sack of cashews, a box(?) of crushed tomatoes, bushels of beets, and an overpriced plastic container of basil leaves later, it was suddenly 10:30pm and I was on the subway eating wasabi tofu from a salad bar box, an overstuffed bag propped between my legs, teenage boys talking about various girls’ various boobs on either side of me. Just like I said, everything made sense again. My Sunday-off-Easter plans were set in motion.

As a Jew, Easter is always a confusing time for me. I mean, no one makes me an Easter basket full of candy or hard-boiled eggs or repentance or whatever the fuck it is you people put in Easter baskets. And without an Easter basket I’m completely at a loss of what to do on Easter. I know I won’t put on pants until 3-4pm, that’s a given, but beyond that? Nada. So thank goodness for my Saturday night visions of stacks. I got to work making my dreams of Vegan Rainbow Lasagna Veggie Stacks a reality.

Pantless.

Totally love these super bright, pretty, fun stacks of goodness. Even my roommate was a fan of the vegan “ricotta” and this is a girl who only tasted tofu for the first time last week. The stacks are fun to make, flexible, and absolutely easy. It was definitely hard not to eat them while I was assembling. It’s so damn inviting! Look at those pretty little things!

So go on and make some stacks. I’m going to go have some mystic visions and cosmic vibrations over hazelnut meal mini chocolate bar cookie pies.

Yeah. That’s a real thing.

VEGAN RAINBOW LASAGNA VEGGIE STACKS

makes 8 stacks. I think.

Ingredients:

STACKERS

3 golden beets, roots and tails trimmed

3 red beets, roots and tails trimmed

3 tomatoes

basil leaves

salt and pepper

“RICOTTA”

1 cup cashews, soaked in water overnight

2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

juice of half a lemon

2 leaves of basil, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

a dash of nutmeg

SAUCE

10g shallots, diced

1 clove of garlic, minced

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 oz vegetable broth

1 cup diced tomatoes

a squeeze or two of half a lemon

½ teaspoon oregano

¼ teaspoon smoked paprika

2 leaves of basil, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Easter? I barely knew her! (Oof.)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Wrap each beet in aluminum foil and place in a roasting pan. Roast for 60-80 minutes or until the beets are soft in their little aluminum cocoons. Let them cool and carefully remove the foil. The skin should just sort of fall off when you pull at it so peel those suckers gently. Set aside.

While your beets roast, make some fake ricotta. Drain and rinse your cashews and place them in a food processor. Add the pumpkin seeds and puree a bit. Add the garlic, nutritional yeast, lemon, basil, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Adding water as needed for texture, process everything until it’s smooth-ish (a little chunkiness is nice, if you ask me). Adjust seasonings as you see fit. Refrigerate and get to your sauce.

Those beets are probably still roasting. Let’s make some sauce. In a saucepan sprayed with cooking oil, cook your shallots until then soften. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook another 30 seconds or so. Toss in the broth and tomatoes. Bring to a gentle boil and add the remaining ingredients. Bring it back down to a simmer and let it cook for another 15 minutes or so. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Slice your beets and tomatoes into ¼” slices. Lightly salt and pepper the slices.

Put everything together!

Ok. There is no real science to this, per say. I made all of mine a little different stack to stack. But here are the ratios I used as a base and to calculate the nutrition…take one red beet slice. Top it with half a tablespoon of ricotta. Lay down a slice of tomato. Then a splash of sauce. Lay a golden beet slice on there, then some basil. One more red beet slice, then some more ricotta, another slice of tomato, more sauce, basil, a golden beet slice, maybe some more sauce, and finally, one last red beet slice. Top with a basil leaf and stick a toothpick in the middle. Ta-da!

Basically, each of my stacks were the sums of the following parts: 3 slices of red beets, 2 slices of golden beets, 2 slices of tomato, 1 – 1½ tablespoons ricotta, 2 teaspoons – 1 tablespoon sauce, and a few basil leaves. I recommend starting with a red beet slice just because anything else will collect all the juices from all the other parts and get tinted and be less pretty. That’s all.

Eat!

NUTRITION