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Very Veggie Pesach 2020: Sweet Potato Lasagna

Here I am, sitting around the house during this corona quarantine, with no place to go and nothing to do but cook for Passover. Fortunately, it gave me a chance to try this gluten-free lasagna! And I was very happy with the results.


Sweet Potatoes
Cottage Cheese

Cooked


This recipe is very similar to my first vegetarian Passover recipe, Matzah Lasagna, which was a guilty pleasure long before I became vegetarian. But I have an increasing number of friends and family who suffer from celiac disease (requiring a gluten-free diet), so I wanted to try a gluten-free Passover lasagna. Gluten-free is a very trendy diet choice these days, so I have seen a number of recipes that substitute something for lasagna noodles. One recipe used butternut squash, but that seemed much too hard to cut for this purpose. Another suggested eggplant but I'm not a big fan of eggplant and it didn't seem to cook well enough for my taste. You're welcome to try those options if you like, but I was happiest with sliced sweet potatoes in place of lasagna noodles. I made a smaller version than what is described below, using a loaf pan (as seen above), to get only two servings out of it, but the 8 x 8 pan recipe described below should feed four nicely, maybe six lighter eaters.

This recipe is, as a said, gluten free and non-gebrochts (contains no matzah) but is not vegan (contains an egg and various cheeses).


Ingredients
  • 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced very thin
  • Bottle of pasta or pizza sauce
  • 8 oz (1 cup) cottage cheese or homemade ricotta
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup shredded Mozzerella cheese (or more to taste)

Kashrut Notes
  • Star-K's website confirms that fresh, unprocessed supermarket produce is not a Passover problem, which covers the sweet potatoes.
  • Tomato sauce requires Passover certification. Gefen makes some very good kosher-for-Passover pizza sauces, if you can find them. If not, Manischewitz or Rokeach tomato sauces in a can are fine and more widely available.
  • Do not use store-bought ricotta! It his normally curdled using white vinegar (made from wheat) which is not obviously stated on the label. Last year I posted a recipe for make-your-own ricotta, or you can use cottage cheese which requires kosher for Passover certification. I have seen Breakstone's cottage cheese in stores with kosher for Passover certification, though it doesn't seem to be in all stores.
  • Whole eggs in the shell are kosher for Passover without special certification, but must be purchased before the holiday if they are not marked as kosher for Passover.
  • Parmesan and Mozzerella cheese require kosher for Passover certification, though most kosher cheeses have Passover certification year-round.

Preparation
  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
  • Mix the cottage cheese, egg and Parmesan in a bowl
  • Put a thin coating of tomato sauce on the bottom of an 8 x 8 pan
  • Lay the sweet potato slices across the bottom covering as much as possible
  • Spread the cottage cheese mix over the sweet potato slices
  • Put a thin layer of tomato sauce over the cottage cheese mix
  • Put a second layer of sweet potato slices on top of that
  • Cover with sauce and shredded mozzerella
  • Cook covered for about 45 minutes, to ensure that the sweet potatoes become sufficiently softened
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
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