The other day I felt a little festive and wanted to try to recreate one of my favorite dishes from R Thomas (a local organic, veggie friendly restaurant). Its a lemon pasta which is really rich and creamy.  I know, this is not healthy in the least but every once in awhile you have to let yourself indulge. R Thomas’ dish is white noodles, lemon cream sauce and a LOT of parm cheese on top.  My dish was made using 1 box of whole wheat linguine noodles, vegan cheese, vegan sour cream, vegan butter, an eggplant out of my garden, Trader Joe’s veggie Italian Sausage, sweet basil out of my garden, cremini mushrooms, Vidalia onion, lemons and garlic.

To prepare your noodles, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. You’re going to cook these noodles al dente (soft but still firm to the bite).  While your water is heating up, preheat your oven to 375 degrees and lightly spray a casserole/lasagna dish and set aside.  To get ready for the adventure ahead of you, zest 3 small lemons and juice 2 of them.  Then dice up a Japanese eggplant, mushrooms and the veggie sausage (comes in a pack of 4, I used 2).  Go ahead and put the ’sausage’, mushrooms and eggplant in a pan with some extra virgin olive oil and saute them (if you lightly salt the veggies they will cook faster…the salt will extract the water from the vegetable).  You don’t have to cook them long because you’re going to transfer all of these ingredients into the lasagna dish and bake it in the oven.

In a medium size pan, melt 4 T of vegan butter in 4 T of extra virgin olive oil on low heat.  Once the butter has melted, add 1/3 c diced onion and 3 minced garlic cloves and turn off the heat.  Add 2 t of Italian seasoning, the juice of 1 lemon and 1/3 of your lemon zest.  Now add in 2 c of vegan sour cream and the basil (I cut 6 or 7 leaves up) and mix slowly.  You can add some sea salt and vegan parm cheese if you’d like.

Once both pans and the pot of noodles have finished, start preparing your casserole. Put the noodles in the lasagna pan first, then the ’sausage’/eggplant/mushroom saute and lastly, pour the sauce right on top making sure you cover as much of the noodles as you can. Season the top of the dish with 1/2 of your leftover lemon zest, red pepper flakes and oregano.  You’re going to cover the dish with foil and bake it in the oven for 15 minutes.  Uncover it and cook for another 10.

Once the noodles were plated I topped them off with some fresh parsley from the garden, a little more lemon zest and a couple drops of leftover lemon juice.  I poured the remaining lemon juice and zest over the top of the leftovers before storing them in the fridge.  Delicious!