cooking @ home

A few minor mistakes and one or two interesting things I came up with for this dish. Let’s get right to it.

First I put the entire pound of lasagna noodles in, only to find out I only needed maybe 1/4 to 1/5 of the box. Now I guess I’ll do something weird or slice them down or something, as I have 3/4 a box of cooked noodles now sitting in the refrigerator. Had I known, I would have chosen to use just what I needed. Live and learn.

I haven’t cooked everything. Not by a longshot. There are plenty of areas I still look forward to trying or conquering. I have a ton of casserole dishes (you know, the white ceramic kind) and some newer “tins” for cupcakes or brownies. What I don’t have is a lasagna pan for the simple good reason I never made it before. So when I fished the noodles out, I realized they were too large to fit what contained I did have. No biggie, this. I just set them up on the cutting board atop each other and halfed them.

My messiest mistake was not judging how high the layers would go. I grabbed this one casserole dish out and started, and immediately saw this was way too low (it was maybe 1 inch possibly 1-1/2 inches high. So then I got out my deepest one at 3 inches and had to transfer over noodles drenched in sauce over to the new dish without making much of a mess.

That’s pretty much it. Everything pretty much went off without a hitch. Ah, and I had one nice discovery I made as well …

It became apparent early that all those slices of eggplant, were I to precook them in a pan, even in my largest 13 inch frying pan, were going to take two to three rotations to get them all done. At four to five minutes per side, that was going to take a half hour and be very inefficient. Since I had to use the oven anyway, it only made sense to do them on a cookie sheet instead. The bonus was, while the eggplant slices were in the oven, the noodle sheets were boiling at the same time. Plus they would get done at about the same time too. Worked out great.

Eggplant Lasagna
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

eggplant, 2.5-3 pounds
1/4 box/pound lasagna noodles
8 oz. shredded mozerella or mixed Italian cheeses
1/2 cup parmagen
3 lb jar spaghetti sauce (or use your own homemade sauce)
2 eggs
1 cup Italian breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
garlic powder

Get water boilling for lasagna noodles. Meanwhile, slice eggplant into thin 1/4 inch slices. Salt and pepper on each side of slices. Add additonal garlic and parmesan cheese to Italian bread crumbs and mix. Dip each eggplant slice in egg wash then cover with breadcrumbs. Arrange on pre-greased (I used butter spray) baking sheet. Place in preheated oven at 350 for five minutes. Flip each slice once, and go for another five minutes.

As you’re putting the eggplant in the oven, place the noodles in boiling water and cook until til al dente. This is one of those rare times, when after draining the noodles you actually should put cold water on them, since you are both going to need to arrange them by hand and since they are going to get another cook in the oven.

Get out your lasagna pan or any sizable casserole dish — in my case (see photo) a deep oval casserole dish 11 x 8.5 x 3. Begin to layer: First place enough sauce to lighly cover the bottom, then overlapping sheets of lasagna noodles, slices of eggplant, cheeses (meaning the shredded and the parm, then more sauce. Continue the pattern. Make sure your uppermost or last layer is noodles, then sauce then cheeses.

If you have a long, wide pan, you might want to keep the oven at the current 350. Or if you have a shorter, deeper dish as I did, set oven for 375 for 35 minutes, covering with aluminum foil. At the 35 minute mark, remove the and bake another 10-12 minutes to get a nice crust on top. Makes 8-10 servings.