Monday, June 16, 2008

Spinach and Eggplant Lasagna...ish

I say ish, because I didn't work from a recipe here, I just sort of layered a lot of ingredients together and put it in the oven. Here's what I did.

Eggplant:
I sliced the eggplant very thin, laid them on a cooling rack and then sprinkled with salt to sweat out some of the moisture and bitterness of the eggplant. Next I rinsed them and dried them. I then took a bowl of olive oil and a bowl of bread crumbs. I took the dried eggplant and dunked it in the olive oil and then coated it with bread crumbs and placed the eggplant slices on a baking dish and cooked in a 375 degree oven for 10 minutes on each side.

Sauce:
in a sauce pan I sauteed 1/2 yellow onion with three cloves garlic. I let the onion get soft and then added a 28-oz can of diced tomatoes and a 6-oz can of tomato paste. When this was all mixed together I added a cup of vegetable stock and herbs as I saw fit (oregano, basil, etc) I let this simmer for a while so the flavors would meld together.

Ricotta:
I took a 16-oz container of low fat ricotta and added salt, pepper, oregano and basil to taste.

Cheese:
I shredded a 16-oz block of fresh mozzarella and grated about 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese. Reserve 1/4 cup to top the lasagna with at the end.

Spinach:
I just used fresh spinach leaves, taking time to remove the stems.

Lasagna Noodles:
I used 12 no boil noodles.

Assembly
Take a glass baking dish, add enough sauce to coat the bottom. Place three lasagna noodles on the bottom. Add enough ricotta cheese to cover each noodle, place three baked eggplant slices to each lasagna noodle, sprinkle on a little mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, place enough spinach on each lasagna noodle to cover each one, sprinkle more cheese on and then place a little sauce on top. Repeat this two more time, then top with the remaining three lasagna noodles, and the rest of the sauce and cheese (not the reserved cheese).

Cover with foil and bake in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, remove the foil, top with the reserved cheese and bake for another 15 minutes until the cheese is browned and bubbly.

I'm sorry this isn't a real recipe that you can easily follow, but this is what I did, I just sort of threw it together as I went.

Rating = So Damn Good

2 comments:

Pam said...

Mmmm, that looks fabulous!

Patricia Scarpin said...

It looks delicious and sounds easy to put together. A winning combo if you'll ask me , JB. :)