In an effort to stop spending money during the work week on take out or vending machine substitutes for lunch, my daughter and I decided to make Eggplant Lasagna.
Now, this is our version. Less cheese, more veggies and quite delicious.
We started with 2 medium eggplants sliced into 1/4 inch rounds.
Salt, pepper and olive oil and bake at 350 degrees on aluminum foil covered baking sheet.
Also, cover with Aluminum foil. Bake (15 minutes or until soft) and put aside to cool.
Grease (I used olive oil) a 9×13 inch pan, and then put 1/3 of a jar of Marinara sauce
Next, add a layer of the eggplant rounds
In a separate bowl, combine 1 package of your favorite cheese (we used a 3 cheese blend)
and 2 eggs. Mix well and place 1/2 the cheese mixture on the eggplant.
Because we were not using a lot of cheese, we placed it directly on each round of eggplant
Note: Many of the recipes I read used several cups of 2-3 different kinds of cheese.
We opted to use less cheese to keep the recipe as low cal as possible, but this is completely up to you. Layer whatever you would like !
We then covered with another 1/3 of the jar of Marinara and a package of frozen peppers.
I would at this point use whatever veggies you would like to bulk up the lasagna, the peppers added a great amount of flavor to the eggplant.
Cover the pepper layer with the rest of the cheese and egg mixture.
Cover with the final 1/3 of the Marinara sauce and sprinkle with Panko and grated Parmesan cheese. Again, this is preference and to your taste, but I find that about a cup of Panko and a couple of tablespoons of Parmesan can go a long way with flavor.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and you will have the delicious bubbling dish below.
We cut it into 8 servings (4 lunches each) and lunch for the week was ready.
We already had many of the ingredients in the house and only needed to purchase the eggplant.
In the Spring, I will be planting eggplant to see if we can reduce
the cost of this delicious dish even more!