Tofu Baked Pasta

I made this tofu baked pasta for dinner and was so excited that we started eating it before any photos were taken!  Oops. That's the one thing about having a Vegan blog - always gotta be sure to snap the photos of any new recipes that you make. It does get a little bit annoying if you're super hungry, but thankfully doesn't take too long if you're able to run outside where it's a bit brighter to take a photo. I snapped this photo of what was left over after Paul and I ate our serving of pasta.

One thing that I will miss about eating dairy are baked pastas. While I didn't eat them very often, I will miss my vegetarian lasagnas, with layers of ricotta cheese and spinach with melted mozzarella on top. Thankfully, we have this Tofu Baked Pasta recipe, which fills my appetite for baked cheesy pastas quite nicely. I am continually amazed at how tofu can taste differently according to what you are making. I've never mashed up extra firm tofu before, but it totally worked in this recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1 box of large shell pasta
1 jar of tomato sauce
1 package of extra firm tofu
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 bunch of fresh basil, chopped
a couple handfuls of baby spinach, chopped
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
splash of lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Boil the shell pasta according to the directions on the box.
2.  Mash up the tofu until it resembles a firm ricotta cheese texture.  Add the nutritional yeast, basil, spinach, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
3.  In a casserole dish, spread out some tomato sauce.  Fill the shells with a couple of spoon fulls of the tofu filling.  Top with the remaining tomato sauce, and bake for 15-20 minutes.

This recipe made enough pasta for the two of us to enjoy that evening, as well as a couple of lunches for following days. Any leftovers keep fairly well in the fridge for a couple of days.  The next time I make this, I may add some more veggies, like finely chopped onion or some minced garlic. Even some broccoli would go well in this pasta, too.