Plant-based Lasagna with Brian

[Music] hi hi i'm jane esselstyn i'm ann esselstyn and i'm brian hart brian and i are married if you don't know and brian is the god of lasagna that's what my brother rip calls him because brian's lasagnas are award-winning not just in our family but wherever he takes them brings them offers them they vanish this is my most incredible opportunity to watch brian make it up close i mean i've never had that chance so i am so excited and if you're following along the ingredients we're using are in plant strong and the recipe is on page 199. i say it like this because what we did is when i wrote this book well i didn't write this book my brother rip wrote this book i did the recipe section and when i was making these recipes i followed everything i wrote it all down and brian assembles it differently than i've written it here in this book so true revelations are true what's it called behind the scenes or what's it called yeah we're revealing we're revealing our secrets they reveal the secrets he makes it in such a better way than here but the ingredients are the same so let's begin the first thing that we have in this raise the barn butternut squash vegetable lasagna on page 199 is a butternut squash and it takes a long time to do this so we have this is our butternut squash but what we did to it is we started with a whole butternut squash and and we cut it in half as you maybe will see brian doing we have some video of him doing that and then we put it on a tray with the cut sides down and baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes so that how long we need it about 45. and then when you take it out what do you do with the he's got to peel the skins off it's a little bit of a pain but just peel the skins off with your hand and then mash it together i hate to say it but you could also buy it already cut up i suppose yep you can buy a coke you can buy it cubed even and then sort of steam it and it's already mushy so you've got this this mush is a really important part and we have things as they say mizon plus ready to go so this was one of things ready to go brian cut here what he has here ready to go is a combination i'm going to list them all is the um one onion some garlic zucchini yellow squash eight ounces of mushrooms a red pepper and two stalks of bok choy with um some frozen spinach as well so that's what is here and this this is all just cooked together no oil in the pan and it's just all exhausted and heated up and ready to go um do you want to add your spices to that now to the veggies actually i'm gonna i'm gonna spice the ricotta okay speaking of ricotta that's the next step do you want to take us through sure so the next step is actually the magic step which really gives the flavor to the lasagna which is to make this um tofu ricotta so you just need a block of is this extra firm just firm tofu we're going to break it up and put it into a uh high speed blender food processor that's the word then it's a half it's a half a cup of walnuts and then spices so oregano and basil thyme actually you've got we have i'm trying to follow the hungry i'm trying to follow the recipe as much as possible since i didn't thought this was basil no here here's basil fresher said fresh basil okay and then thyme i think you have time so we're going to do one tablespoon of oregano and then some chap and then there's time here here's time we left time here time for time just a little bit not too much it's about it it's about a teaspoon all right so now we're going to pulse it until we get the right consistency of ricotta really straightforward you want to grind up all the uh all the the walnuts brian can you grind it too long or not uh it's pretty hard to you really have to grind for a while but you can see the consistency now is just like ricotta you can see from the camera shop okay tough shot there you go look at here let's crumble it a little bit so it looks just like just like ricotta cheese yeah now what happens to this well it just goes in right in with the vegetables and then what we're going to do is we're going to mash it up and blend it up together do you want a um do you like tofolo's too as much as and i do i i am a tovalo fan i would think you'd use your your hands to do that i'm not a cult envelope member like you guys are we are cult members that's a good way to put it oh you left some precious bits in here brian pull it out pull it out okay okay okay and you have a tovalo thank you co cult number um so this is what i did not do in the published recipe in plants strong i kept the this ricotta separate from the vegetables there's a hunk all these layers i mean i feel like such a um what's what's the word for when you don't do things properly like poser poser a sophistry i don't even know um i actually have a friend here who's in the wings with what what word would it be if i represented it wrong poser please note the way brian just does things and he has this special it just is such a professional okay so now we have this one now we have this incredible stuffing we'll call it stuffing for lasagna well it's like a ricotta so the ricotta mixed in with all the vegetables you're making the tofu ricotta you're making this uh this stuffing and really what we're going to do is you want to is flatten it down in the pan and then you're going to divide it in half just take the tofu and divide it in half and that's basically how you're going to break it up you're going to that's how you add yup that's it like add half at one time apologies again about the way that i didn't write it up right all right time to assemble so we've got our classic lasagna pan here let's get you underneath the can you get a top shot empty pan here we go so we've got the classic lasagna pan here and so what the first thing you want to do is put a little bit of sauce on the bottom this is the sauce jane you want to talk about the sauce that you made yes well we just made this um we make our own um marinara sauce and we just have a video that we did about it's called fast and fresh marinara and um and we will send you have the video link come right up here now i use i use the noodle like a like a plow like a blade and i just use the noodle to spread it around oh how cool oh brian and then get a good top shot of that wave can you see that i like that it's now this is this um this lasagna pan actually has curved corners so i usually have to break the corner of the noodle off these are hard noodles uncooked so it fits in there nicely now i'm just going to layer them in you see the last one you got to break the corner so it fits cool then i take one and i break off small pieces and just fill in the gaps doesn't have to be perfect just do the best you can you need to be a good breaker yeah you got to break it nicely now first thing that's going to go in is half of our ricotta mixture and i washed my hands just so you all know and i i divided it in half oh my goodness that's going to get something this is such a better instructions than i have written in brian recipe so embarrassed now every layer remember every layer needs sauce every layer so now we're going to cover this we're going to put some sauce in we're going to use our plow our noodle plow so we have you need a little sauce a little bit more sauce noodles here and filling sauce noodles filling now you forgot about the sweet potato or the uh sorry this uh okay we're gonna okay squash i'm just gonna stay where we are we've done we've done sauce noodles and filling and now we're doing sauce no no filling noodles noodles go between every layer there's sauce you put sauce on them well yeah i think of it as like mixing it in so you kind of mix it that's what i think of a layer of sauce is like a layer but you just kind of sort of you sort of like that perfect corner piece i've got a little bit over here i'm connecting all these little toenails over here toenails it's a nice image for a cooking show sorry that's kind of gross all right so now comes uh oh i am really every stage of the game i'm sorry for how i wrote it up and this is where you got to really use your fingers oh that's the trick the fingers the fingers and the blade the plow or whatever you're calling the clown can i have a plow oh a plastic that's good broken one's best oh really yeah okay this is this is so different now of course always this even makes me want to make lasagna i've always thought it was like just there's a problem brian can make it brian's an artist also like he draws something and it looks like what he's trying to draw draws a cartoon and it's not going to tell the cause you always got to put sauce throwing something you always get your sauce doing this it's the same not a ton don't need a ton of sauce when you're mixing it in with the uh it's like a skim coat isn't it now layer of uh i'll place toenails over here now if you're really thinking you got to make sure you alternate which sides your uh your gaps are going into whoops i didn't need to break that off i have a lot of gaps over here and oh whoops for the for those curious for those curious what kind of noodles we're using we are actually using a brand called tinkiata and um they are a brown rice pasta based lasagna noodle because some of our friends have a sensitivity to wheat um we have no problem with whole wheat noodles just definitely but um you're making toenails now so now we got another layer of noodles now another layer of the ricotta wow that's a lot let's get it all in there eh oh look at this plow over here covered with sauce holy chick oh we're gonna be low do i have a whole box over there oh i was i was just a little bit of sauce always sauce you got to sauce every layer saucy put more sauce like we'll use our plough on the top yup here you can if he needs those more sauce i think that that corner yep not too much though because we got to save some for the top layer we got a lot i don't know um i trust i trust brian in lasagna no in brian i trust in brian lasagna i trust and brian making lasagna enterprise i'm trying to say i trust you making this oops mess that up we got to fill our gaps here we've got so many toenails oh my goodness oh my we could make like a pot of lasagna with all these little pieces or pot of pasta so i'm going to try to say what you've got going here you did a layer of sauce and then a layer of noodles and then a filling layer filling and then a little skim coat of sauce and then layer yeah you're always when did this go on and then in the middle after look at the video see it goes noodle well it put a tiny bit of sauce in the bottom then it's noodles um filling a little bit of sauce in with the filling noodles uh i keep want to say sweet potato uh yellow butternut squash noodles sweet potato actually we do in some of our lasagnas what are we saying here um and then okay i started and then you're just and repeat then repeat so ultimately you're getting two layers of butternut squash and two layers of stuffing and many layers of skim coat and many layers of noodles we're really having a hard time spreading this one here here we got a little more we've got a few bites a few bites that we can add we need some sauce and do we have enough oh my gosh we've got so much sauce i can't believe it yes hooray and this is gonna remember we're gonna do one more layer of oh we are yep so that's good that's plenty for this layer because there's more this is the biggest thing brian really yeah we're doing one more layer of noodles that's it and then we're covering with sauce this is this is going to overflow the dish bring it on wait till you see it bring it out just makes it i feel like every stage of the game here i want to keep apologizing for again what i have published in the book this is nothing like what brian made and i and you think i've caught on to that being married to you and watching you do this for two and a half decades now is that it all of our noodles we need more we've got a lot of toenails if we need to oh look what we've got we've got this thing brian look we got it it is so perfect look perfect tune it about oh no about two boxes or maybe two in the hair i don't know my house okay now all the sauce we have left really yep you can just dump it wow oh how nice this is what we um perfect this is what our uh this is exactly what our marinara recipe made excellent [Music] you saved a plow unbelievable we need for the topping you need ryan's basil right right you are trying to get some fresh basil the master look at that perfect just worked out perfectly well it's a little over the edge it'll shrink down it'll shrink down yeah now we're gonna that's a beauty to make it artistic on the top we're gonna um nutritionally use some a little bit of nutritional yeast and rinse my hands here's the nutrients in this little um plants only spice box so that's a nice little spice box this is a space spice box so a little bit of nutritional yeast we chop up the basil what do you want to do with the basil i'm going to use scissors okay is that all that that's all the nutritional yeast you put on yup i would have put some more i like that i like that he he like he's a governor we have no governor inside we don't know well or not brian does something that i never can believe he he knows just how much of the pepper to put in and he leaves the rest when i have a little left i just put it in but it's that fact of having a governor that makes such a difference in your cooking anymore that's good so i'm just taking i'm just taking basil mashing it into a pile here and then just slicing it just be careful with the tips of your fingers maybe some of you guys have those basil scissors that have like numerous little um slices of an iceland we had yep now jane won't let me but sometimes i crumble some uh i crumble some walnuts and put them on the top why don't you do that i mean in the recipe book in the recipe it says to crumble cashews right yeah and i just we like to keep it plant perfect and just you know you can do it like this and just this is done or you can put on a couple nuts on top if i'm taking some walnuts i'm just going to mash them on this cutting board here and then we'll sprinkle them on top i am stepping on so many little pieces still look at how he's mashing how interesting just crush crush crushing okay um i'm gonna get rid of all these extra things over here because i think we're done with all the lasagna noodle needs so now i'm just taking some crushed walnuts and putting them on top just for a little bit of flavor and that is just a simple little lasagna oh no and now this but how do we this is now at 350 i cook it for an hour i i think it's hard to overcook a lasagna cook it for a solid hour in a preheated oven once it's covered in tin foil so then you take the foil off at the last for the last little bit uh you can you can you can take the foil off the toast you see brian left all these walnuts now i would put all those walnuts on how can you leave those brian for my cereal you never want to over walnut what would essie say how can you over walnut what would essie say here just put it back in there he would say that now that brian that goes in the oven but what brian did for us is yesterday he made this exact same thing so i'm going to pull that out of the oven while he puts that one in ready let's toast the dough wade you want to check it out actually it doesn't it's not very exciting it's just um here it is ah it is oh my gosh you have to hold hold your core hold your core oh it's hot yeah all right brian big reveal all you i'm going to clean up some of this chaos here oh look at her undulations is what it looks like look at her that's a beauty oh i have a little handful of nuts what do i give me a little dish for brian's cereal here put it here put them in there oh all right so let's try we have these great little plates perfect for our little i'm so excited let's see if we can get a solid good looking piece out of this it's hard when it's hot yeah again when things set especially when they have a complex carbohydrate that they set and you can slice it you know oatmeal in the morning if you put it in the refrigerator for herbs i put a little sauce on it afternoon you could slice your oatmeal did you want me to put some yes put some sauce on top oh that's gorgeous can we get one for wade and one for you and me like we're pressing our luck here no perfect good grief these are big pieces i know luckily we're hungry i'm hungry look at that beauty look at her profile okay go again let's do this one an internal one internal the whole yummy the whole the center so we don't have any sides or walls excuse me all profile oh look at that oh that's the best looking one yeah wait do you see her size and do you see her from this angle oh did you get her from that angle and from behind doesn't it look at that top shot all right give me it give me oh ann's dressing okay so let's get our forks and have a bite [Music] wade you up for a bite yeah sure does this have walnuts on top brian uh yes okay here i have a have a have a bite you guys bite this one i'm gonna save this handsome one for our profile shot hey hey brian thank you yum it's just it's just lasagna's got such every every how do you say every bit of your bite tastes different how do you say that like every my only criticism is it needs those extra walnuts oh cheesy okay so please enjoy your plant strong lasagna following brian's updated uh instructions do not pay any attention to how i described it here in the book i don't know i don't know what took me over i mean do you know well it still would be good because i like how this is assembled i know it would taste maybe an issue the same but this is great okay hey rock on let us know how you assemble your lasagna and i hope you enjoy it thanks so much [Music]

Channel: Jane Esselstyn

Views: 51,761

Keywords: Vegan Plant based, Vegan Cooking, Vegan life style, Jane esselstyn, Plant Based Eating, Plant, Based, Cooking, Ann, Esselstyn

Id: VchoSzhzPuI

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021