A Tablespoon Of Liz

I like using the word ‘faux’ instead of ‘fake’. It makes things sound so much fancier. I also like pushing words together. Like, instead of ‘fake ricotta cheese’ or ‘tofu ricotta cheese’ I would say, ‘faux-cotta cheese’. An example of this would be in the title of this post.

First of all, these are delicious. Let me show you the money shot right away, because no one should have to wait till the end of this post to see them in all their glory. (Uncooked glory, I did not get a photo of them out of the oven. What can I say, I was hungry.)

Normally, I would think something would be off with a dish like this if it wasn’t covered in a blanket of cheese, but this dish doesn’t even miss it. Not in the slightest. And I know it looks kind of heavy, but it’s really not! It’s relatively light for a pasta dish.

So let’s get straight to the recipe.

Faux-Cotta Roll Ups
1 recipe broccoli faux-cotta cheese filling (below)
8 whole wheat lasagna noodles
1- 16 oz. jar of marinara sauce, or homemade if you prefer

Cook the lasagna noodles as directed on the package. Drain them, then lay them flat on a paper towel and let them dry off just a little. Cut each noodle in half.

Then, you want to place about 2 tablespoons of the faux-cotta filling on the end of each roll, leaving about and inch.

Once you’ve done that with all of the noodles, take about 1/3 of your sauce and pour it into the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish. Place your noodle roll ups in the pan.

Take the remaining sauce and pour it over the noodles, making sure that they’re all decently covered.

Cover with tin foil and bake at 350 degrees F for about an hour.

Broccoli Faux-Cotta Cheese Filling

6 oz. extra firm tofu
1 cup frozen broccoli, thawed and chopped
1 T nutritonal yeast
1 t salt
1 t italian seasoning
1 T parsley
1/4 t black pepper
1 T lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, chopped

Crumble the tofu into a bowl, and mix in the broccoli. Add everything else in, and stir. That was easy enough!

So there you go. This has been my dinner and lunch for the past couple of days. I think if it was socially acceptable to eat pasta for breakfast I would have this for breakfast too.

Aaanndd, If you’re really doubting the faux-cotta cheese, ask my mom about it. When we had these for dinner I told her you couldn’t even tell that this wasn’t real ricotta cheese, and she looked up puzzled and said “This isn’t real ricotta cheese?”

Nope. Because faux-cotta is where it’s at.

What are some of your favorite pasta dishes? Do you have any fun plans for Valentine’s day? 

Tags: bake, cheese, dairy-free, dinner, egg-free, food, garlic, italian, lasagna, marinara, meal, noodles, nutritional yeats, pasta, recipe, ricotta, roll ups, tofu, tomato, vegan, vegetarian, whole wheat