Eggplant Lasagna

I will post pictures after I put the lasagna in the oven. I prepped and assembled it last night to give the eggplant slices time to absorb the flavors from the sauce. (The picture didn't turn out that great.)

I have no recipe for the sauce. I usually get crushed tomatoes in a can. San Marzanos whenever I can find them. Most brands of crushed tomatoes have sugar added so I buy the cans of whole peeled tomatoes and chop them myself. When Frank showed me how he made his sauce he put the resulting sauce in a blender for me because at that time I did prefer a smooth sauce. The sauce usually starts with olive oil, onion, and garlic. I always use dried oregano because I do not feel the flavor of fresh oregano is much better than the dried. What I do believe in is fresh basil. I didn't use fresh this time. I add veggies such as red bell pepper or a jar of roasted pimentos to help sweeten up the sauce. The meat also usually varies. Sometimes it is just ground turkey or ground turkey italian sausage. It is never the same. I vary it up according to what I have on hand.

I partially peeled the eggplant and sliced them up really thinly. I did consider also using zucchini slices but I decided against it and put them back in the fridge. The ricotta cheese was mixed with eggs, parsely, and a pinch of nutmeg. I didn't have any frozen spinach otherwise that would have been layered with everything else. I put the sauce on the bottom of the pan, layers fof eggplant, ricotta mixture, fresh grated parmesan, mozzarella cheese, and topped it all off with a sprinkling of pine nuts. Pine nuts are yummy!

Edit***In my opinion the eggplant lasagna was not that great. Even after salting and squeezing out the water, the eggplant still made the dish really watery. I think next time I make it I will roast the slices in the oven first to dry them out and to cook them a little more. I felt the eggplant could have been a little more cooked. It was watery and hard to slice. When I took it to work the next day it sliced very nicely. Lisa said it was delicious. Cinque didn't even notice that the noodles were missing. Karen had it for dinner and the next day she said it was delicious. It wasn't a disaster afterall. I still was not convinced it was lasagna.