You know I love to cook up lasagnas and bakes with as many veggies as humanly possible. Last week, though, I decided to do a spin on lasagna, using sliced sweet potato instead of lasagna layers. Also, I thought my husband Fran might stage a mutiny if we had another meat-free night, so I decided to make it with a turkey meat sauce as well. As with nearly all of my recipes, I made it up as I went along and I have to tell you, I was kind of nervous about how this one would work out.
Happliy, it turned out to be delicious – it’s definitely just made the list of ‘go-to’ dinners in our household.
Sweet Potato and Turkey ‘Lasagna’ (6 servings)
Ingredients:
- 1 pound turkey breast meat, ground
- 15 oz black beans
- 3 large sweet potatoes
- 16 oz diced tomatoes (I use a tetra pack of tomatoes)
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 2 heads broccoli, cut into small stalks.
- 2 yellow squash, sliced
- 3 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 1/2 yellow onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
- 1 pint ricotta cheese
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- shredded Parmesan and mozzarella cheese (probably about 2 oz of each)
- dried Italian seasoning
- salt & pepper to taste
Note: I was going to use zucchini in this as well, but I accidentally bought cucumbers instead. Oops. 🙂
Directions:
Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. First I peeled and cut the sweet potatoes into 4 pieces per potato. Then I boiled them in water for about 5 minutes. I added the peeled, chopped carrot for the last 2 minutes. The idea is to soften them slightly, but not cook them.
Then, saute the onions and garlic in olive oil on a low heat. Add the turkey meat, seasoned with a little salt and pepper and brown. Add the black beans, tomatoes, tomato paste, dried Italian seasoning, and simmer on a low heat. You can add salt and pepper to taste here – I didn’t, because my toddler Roman was sharing and I try to limit his salt. Fran and I definitely needed to add a little salt to the dish after it was served up.
While the meat and black bean sauce is simmering, slice the softened sweet potato into about 1/4 inch thick slices. Arrange on the base of a pre-oiled baking dish.
Then, add the uncooked broccoli and yellow squash, with the very slightly cooked carrots. This is the bit I was kind of worried about – my idea was they would cook in the juices of the meat sauce, but I was concerned they would stay too crunchy. They cooked perfectly, though.
Add half the meat and black beans sauce on top.
Then sprinkle with a mix of half the shredded Parmesan and half the shredded mozzarella.
Next, add half the ricotta, in chunks, evenly spaced.
For the second layer, arrange in this order: sweet potatoes, veggies, ricotta, meat sauce, then cheese on top.
Bake in a 375 degree oven for 40 minutes. I baked it uncovered, so the cheese went brown and a little crunchy on the edges. You could also cover with foil and take the foil off for the last 10 minutes for a less browned bake.
It was really good – the sweet potato with ricotta gave it kind of a sweet creaminess, which made it seem as decadent as a regular lasagna with pasta. Three thumbs up, from me, Fran and Roman!
Let me know if you make this and if you like it!
Enjoy! 🙂
