Friday Food: Eggplant Lasagna!

Feast of St. Michael the Archangel

This is sooooo good, it kind of makes me wonder if it should be a Friday food, since the whole thing is about sacrifice, right? Anyway, here we go.

Ingredients:

2 medium sized eggplants (see the article on the sidebar about preparing eggplant properly)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
8 oz mozzarella cheese
8 oz ricotta cheese
1 26 ox Jar of your favorite pasta sauce (we're going to dress it up)
1 16 oz box lasagna noodles
3-5 cloves garlic
1/2 medium yellow or red onion
2-3 large handfuls of fresh, clean, whole spinach
7-8 large, fresh, sliced basil leaves (if using dried, 1 tablespoon) **optional
Salt, pepper
2 tablespoons Chianti (or any other dry red wine)
One 8x8 baking pan

Prepare the eggplant (i.e. peel it and rub it with salt), and while it is sitting in the colander, fill a large pot with water for the pasta, drizzle a little oil into the water, sprinkle a bit of salt, and turn the heat on high. Pre-heat your over to 350 degrees.

In another pot (one large enough to hold that jar of sauce), drizzle about one teaspoon of olive oil, mince the garlic and onion, and saute them in the olive oil until the onion is tender. At this point, if using dried basil, toss that in. If using fresh, wait. Add the jar of sauce, stir well and bring the sauce to a simmer. Meanwhile. . .

Slice the eggplant into "coins" about 1/2 inch thick. Now this is where calories come in, but hey, you pretty much fasted today, right? Anyway, arrange the eggplant coins in one layer at the bottom of a large saucepan, and LIBERALLY drizzle with olive oil. The eggplant will soak a lot of it up, but as the eggplant cooks, it will release some of it again. You want the eggplant totally coated and glossy with olive oil, on all sides, move it around in the pan until it is all coated. Crack some salt and pepper over this layer, and put on medium heat. Turn the pieces over with a pair of tongs and cook every piece until they are dark in color and tender, but still firm. You don't want to cook these until they are mush. Set them on a plate, DON'T drain the oil from them.

By this time you will have added the lasagna noodles to the water, stirred them to coat them with oil so they won't stick together, and they are now happily boiling away. These should boil about 8 minutes, or until they are al dente (slightly chewy but cooked all the way through). Drain them when they are done in the same colander and make sure they are dry.

Now that the sauce is simmering, add the chianti, the spinach, and the basil, stir, turn off the heat and cover to wilt the leafy ingredients.

Drizzle a small bit of olive oil into the bottom of the baking pan, and lay the first layer of pasta. I do a double layer for the bottom, laying a couple strips one way, then another layer of strips going the opposite way. Pour some sauce over the noodles, then add a layer of eggplant coins, then a layer of slices of mozzarella, a couple of spoonfuls of ricotta, and mush the ricotta around so that every bite you take will have some. Now you can either pour in some more sauce, or add another layer of pasta. Alternate layers like this until you get to the top of the pan. The last layer that you lay should go pasta, sauce, eggplant, cheese and more sauce. Cheese and sauce should be all you can see on the top.

Now slide this onto the middle rack of your oven, and bake until the cheese is golden brown on top, which will be about 30 minutes or so.

Slice and serve with Fresh Spinach, Wheat Toast Slices with Garlic Butter, and some Chianti in glasses.

**One variation I like to do to this is saute some big, fat mushroom slices with the garlic and onion, then take them out and layer these slices with the eggplant slices. Mmmmmmmmm.