It’s basil season! And spinach season! And, well, let’s just say it’s lasagna roll season, too.
These make a great appetizer if you’re doing a little summer entertaining, or a filling entree if you prefer. Tofu ricotta is elevated with the addition of some Pumpkin Seed Pesto. The mellow flavor of pumpkin seeds really lets the basil shine. The sautéed spinach is really really garlicky, as is the pesto, so this makes the perfect date night meal.
What I really love, besides how flavorful these are, is the texture. Baking the rolls makes the noodles soft but still toothsome, with little crunchy bits on the edges. Smothered in cashew cream and pesto and finished off with a scattering of additional pumpkin seeds, these lasagna rolls will fulfill even the most wild fantasies: creamy, crunchy, velvety, chewy, and hearty all at once. Yes, there are a few components here, but none are too difficult to pull off and also LASAGNA ROLLS.
Serve with Caesar Salad to round out the meal!
PS This is my first blogpost using only iPhone photos, so take a deep breath with me. Sorry $2000 camera, this is just easier. Since I’m not an aspiring photographer, I’m not ashamed to admit that adjusting lighting and apertures and editing in Photoshop is just too labor intensive for me these days. A few adjustments in VSCO cam, a button to upload to Flickr, and my work is done here. You get the picture. Har har.
Notes
~You don’t need all of the lasagna noodles called for, but go ahead and boil the whole package to account for some breakage. Saute the leftovers and broken ones for dinner the next night.
~The amount of ricotta made is just enough to fill the rolls, so go easy with the taste testing and don’t overfill the rolls, or you might not get ten out of the deal.
~I put the pesto in a little plastic bag with a hole cut out of the corner to pipe it nicely over the rolls. Then just spread it a bit with a spoon and it’s real pretty like.
~I make the white sauce before the pesto to cut down on cleaning a little bit. You can pour the white sauce out and then just rinse the blender without having to do a major cleaning, since who cares if a little bit of cashew cream ends up in your pesto.
Ingredients
12 oz lasagna noodles
For the white sauce:
1 cup cashews, soaked for at least 2 hours
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
For the pesto:
2 cloves garlic
3 cups fresh basil, loosely packed
1/2 cup pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), plus extra for garnish
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
Several dashes fresh black pepper
For the ricotta:
1 14 oz extra firm tofu, crumbled
1/4 cup pesto
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
For the spinach:
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
10 oz baby spinach
Directions
Make the noodles:
Bring a big pot of salted water to boil and cook the noodles al dente, stirring occasionally to make sure they don’t stick together. If they seem to be, use metal tongs to gently peel them apart. Once cooked, drain them in a colander and run them under plenty of cold water to make sure they stop cooking and don’t stick together.
Make the white sauce:
Drain cashews. In a blender, combine all ingredients and blend until completely smooth. This could take 1 to 5 minutes depending on your blender. Scrape down the sides of the blender with a rubber spatula every minute or so to make sure you get everything. Set aside.
Make the pesto:
Place garlic cloves in a blender and pulse a bit to chop. Add basil, pumpkin seeds, olive oil, nutritional yeast, lemon juice salt and pepper and blend. It should still have some texure and not be completely smooth. Thin with a few tablespoons of water to get it into a spreadable consistency.
Make the ricotta:
In a medium mixing bowl, mash tofu with your hands or an avocado masher, until it resembles ricotta cheese. Mix in pesto, nutritional yeast, olive oil, lemon juice and salt until well combined. Set aside.
Make the spinach:
Preheat a large heavy bottomed skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium low heat. Add the olive oil and garlic and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add spinach and cook, stirring often, until wilted, about 3 minutes. Set aside.
Assemble and bake:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 9×13 inch casserole dish with olive oil.
Spread 3 tablespoons of ricotta mixture evenly over each lasagna noodle, leaving a little room around the side edges and 1/2 inch at each end.
Scatter about 3 tablespoons of spinach mixture over the ricotta. Starting at the bottom end, roll noodle up and place, seam side down, in the casserole dish. Continue with all remaining noodles. Pour the white sauce over the rolls in thick ribbons.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until edges are lightly browned and white sauce is thickened. If after 25 minutes the rolls are not browning but the edges are crispy, place under a broiler on low heat for a minute or two, keeping a very close eye so that they don’t burn.
Remove from oven and smother on remaining pesto. Garnish with additional pumpkin seeds and serve!
The iPhone photos look great! Sorry the lasagna rolls ruined your day, but they seem perfect for a weekend dinner, where I’m sure they’ll make mine.
Isa! we met at whole foods in Omaha! Im from boulder… now living in NYC…will make this, looks so good, on gluten free noodles. keep these yummy recipes coming! XO
Can’t wait to make these. Going to be my husbands Father’s Day dinner treat. Thanks Isa!
YOU ARE A BUSY LADY don’t worry about those photos – these look nicer than the ones I take with my camera. Also I would eat this.
These look super delicious and I can’t wait to make them! The person who I’m going to feed these to has a nut allergy. What’s a good sub for the cashews? Thanks!! (so excited about putting these in my face)
Dana, perhaps you could try making a vegan bechamel sauce to replace the cashew-based sauce. This recipe looks interesting and is nut-free if you substitute the almond milk with soy milk: http://www.veganricha.com/2013/03/lasagna-bechamel-with-sweet-potato-and.html
I can’t wait to try this recipe, it looks delicious! Unfortunately it’s winter here so it may be a little more difficult for me to procure basil but I’m quite determined. 🙂
These looks amazing- what a great idea; I would prefer making these to regular lasagne. Good to see you are still posting recipes here despite the new restaurant- and those pictures are fine- beter than I would take with any camera 🙂
Oh my that looks awesome! I will make it with rucola pesto instead of basil, I have an overabundance of rucola in the garden.
This looks so amazingly delicious and healthy! Thank you for sharing!
love u
love u sis.
How much pesto goes into the ricotta? Thanks!
1/4 cup, it’s right there in the recipe!
I don’t do soy, and feel like I miss out on so many of these lovely “tofu-cheese” recipes. Any recommendations? More cashew cream? Or almonds?
If you serve it as an entree (with a ceasar salad on the side), will 10 rolls be enough to feed 4 hungry vegans?
GIRL. You the best.
What a gorgeous dish (great photos, btw)! Can’t wait to try this. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
These rolls sound so delicious! I heart cashew cheese, but I haven’t done nearly enough with cashew creams or sauces (like, as in, none ever), so I’m excited to try this out.
what a gorgeous dish!
These look awesome Isa, I want to make the pesto and slather it on everything!
Do it, girl!
Made these tonight and they were DELICIOUS! Thanks Isa!
I made this yesterday and it was AWESOME. It made me cry tears of joy that someone out there understands me and the food I like to eat. The pesto recipe will be my go-to pesto recipe from now on. All the pieces came together quickly for me with a Vitamix while I was boiling the noodles. I LOVE YOU.
I just love that I never have to look anywhere beyond your website/books for my weekly meal plans (and I know it will turn out DELISH because it always does!)
Made this for diner today. yummy.
Pics are great! What’s a VSCO cam?
It’s an editing ap!
Once baked, could these be frozen? Looks great and can’t wait to try it.
This looks so delicious and do not worry about the pics they are great. Will have to try this. Thanks!
Oh my goodness this looks so delicious! I am excited to try these rolls this week and am so glad to have discovered your blog!!
Wow! This looks delicious! A bit of an effort but I think it’d be an impressive main dish. Can’t wait to try make this!
I tried it out last week and I was really disappointed. I followed the recipe step by step but the result was not convincing in taste or texture. Just look at the filling… 10 oz of spinach and 14 oz of tofu, and not a single grain of salt, or a drop of soy sauce, or anything similar to create some taste. I followed the recipe and didn’t add any salt, although I already had a bad feeling about this, but my trust in the recipe prevailed and I hoped it would turn out well in the end.
But… I ditched more than half the lasagna, because I just couldn’t convince myself to eat this. What a waste of beautiful ingredients. 🙁
There is salt in every element of the recipe so…well, that’s all.
I made these for dinner tonight and they were fantastic! I don’t get why the previous comment said there was no salt in the recipe? Because there is…?
made them last night and they were absolutely fantastic! I didn’t have pumpkin seeds so used pine seeds instead. I don’t really understand one of the last comments regarding the missing salt…
I made this last night and am so happy I did. Very tasty! My noodles stuck together in the boil, so the rolls weren’t nearly as neat and pretty, but it was delicious all the same. Thanks Isa
I made these on the weekend and they were absolutely fantastic! I added some chopped kalamata olives to the tofu-cotta, and it was delish. Thank you thank you thank you Isa!
I made these last weekend and they were just as good as they look! There is a bit of prep involved for each separate element, but like any lasagna, once you start putting the pieces together, it’s ready in a flash! I put them together in the morning and then stuck the pan in the refrigerator and pulled it out an hour before baking. I also baked the pesto stripes and the pepitas for about 10 minutes at the end rather than putting them on cool. Delicious!!!
These are fantastic! Made these Sunday and automatically in the new rotation for us. Can you say “leftover heaven”? Isa you are a genius
This is a new favorite and will now be a regularly occurring meal! Extremely happy with the results and it was actually quite fun to make!
I love this recipe! It crubs my craving for cheesy delicious italian food.
These were amazing!!! I actually made them into a lasagna as I had so much pasta which came out perfectly and unbroken and I wanted to use it all so I layered the pasta, pesto, spinach and cheesy white sauce twice over and then topped with the white sauce.
I served with a spicy arrabiata. It was a HUGE hot with my hubby!!!!
I made it and it was just great, or like we say in Germany “der Hammer” 🙂
Just creamy, tasty and filling!
I made this the other night as a small lasagna (after two failed attempts with boiling the noodles and keeping them in one piece), and it was delicious. The pesto really makes the dish, and the pepitas added a nice crunch. ( I did add a little cashew cream in between each layer.) My non-veg eight year old loved it–this is going into rotation. Thank you!
Wow. This dish shows us that we can replace every meal by vegan’s version. Great alternative for classic lasagna.
I made the 3 components but used it for polenta lasagna. Omg, best pesto, ricotta, and cashew cream ever. Can’t wait to make it as intended, and every other way possible. New fave!
Oh my. Made these for dinner last night and they are heaven in a baking dish. The only thing I added was to caramelize some onions with the spinach, just because I love onions, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. So so yummy. Isa and the PPK are for realz. Thanks for another great one. Please never stop creating recipes.
Isa, It Looks Great & I love your recipes. Also I’ve prepared my own blog but not gone live yet one reason is that I thought I needed a professional camera but I’ve learnt make the best of what you”ve got, this has INSPIRED me.
I made these exactly as the recipe says! They are perfect and so delicious. Even better the next day! Thank you Isa!!
I made this recipe last night for my husband and myself – and my husband is a die-hard carnivore and does not like tofu. He absolutely LOVED it! He just asked if he could take the leftovers for lunch at work tomorrow! This was so flavorful and yummy! It will definitely be on heavy rotation in our house! Thanks!
I’m wondering why don’t you use canneloni pasta? Rolling up lasagne noodles sounds a little messy…
I made these yesterday with great results! Pesto is the besto! I used whole wheat lasagna noodles, however, because that’s how I “roll”. Delicious!
Oh maaan I made these yesterday and I’ve just had the last bite of leftovers – so, so, so good. I couldn’t be bothered with cashews, so I substituted a standard bechamel sauce (earth balance, flour, soy milk) instead, did the job. I LOVE the basil pesto, will definitely make that more often. *garlic burps*
These are delicious! And perfect for the basil coming in from our CSA farm share. I actually blend the spinach right into the ricotta mixture to avoid texture issues with my daughter and, admittedly, me!