https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Y3iG-qa-0c
- I love a fun twist
on old favorites, just like eggplant lasagna, all the comfort and
deliciousness of lasagna without the pasta. (upbeat music) Hi everyone, Suzy here from
themediterraneandish.com, your number one resource
for Mediterranean cooking. Today's all about
eggplant lasagna, we're gonna start
with three eggplants or about a pound and
a half of eggplant. So we're after long
slices of eggplant here that are about a half
an inch in thickness. So first off, I'm
going to trim the top and we're gonna
trim the sides here because these are gonna
essentially be too small and then just kinda
position the eggplant on its side this way, and now you have a
nice stable ground and you're gonna go in
and do half inch slices. People ask me if they
need to peel the eggplant, you don't have to. With our trick, we
kind of almost halfway peeled our egg plant and this is what
we're looking for.
Whenever I'm working
with eggplant, the biggest tip my mom gave me was to salt the eggplant first. So again, I hit them up right
here on both sides with salt. From what I understand, what the salt does is
it draws out the water, and so, the spongy
texture of eggplant, kind of breaks it
down a little bit. It flavors it nicely and
then, at the same time, because it draws
out this moisture, the eggplant does
not need as much oil.
All in all, whenever I
haven't salted my eggplant, I didn't enjoy it as much. So I always do the step, but if you don't have the
time, you can skip it. All right, I see
some beading here, a little bit of water
surfacing on my eggplant. So I'm just gonna go ahead and tap the eggplant
dry on both sides. We're gonna need some good
extra virgin olive oil so that we can brush our
pan and our eggplant slices. And I'm using Private
Reserve Extra Virgin
Olive Oil, you guys. You can find that on
themeditarraneandish.com, just hit the "shop" tab. And we're gonna go ahead and
assemble our eggplant slices. No need to season at this point, 'cause more will be happening.
For now just make sure you
assemble your eggplant slices all in one layer. If you need to use two pans, go ahead and do that, 'cause you do want it
to be nice and pliable so that you can work with it
much like lasagna noodles. I like to use a
brush as opposed to pouring the olive oil on it, 'cause you wanna make sure
that you cover the surface, but you don't
wanna use too much. All right, looking good. This party is heading in the
oven for about 20 minutes or so on high heat, say 400 until
they're nice and soft, and then you can use them
to make your lasagna.
All right, one of my
favorite things about lasagna is the cheesy ricotta filling. So that is what
we're about to do as our eggplants are
cooking, efficient, you guys, I love multitasking. First of all, we're
gonna beat one egg. This is what's gonna
bind everything together. I don't know, this is
how my mom does it. So I'm beating the egg as my
mom would, for like an omelet.
All right, here we go. All right, we have three
cheeses going on here. Part skim ricotta,
mozzarella, and Parmesan. So this is all going to
go down in one big bowl and we're gonna
mix it up together. I'll say about a
cup of mozzarella. Leave the rest for later to
top that beautiful lasagna. And I'll say about a
quarter cup or so Parmesan. Next, we gotta do some chopping. We have three garlic
cloves, minced. Garlic lovers, you can
go, I don't know, a dozen? No, I'm just kidding. Three garlic cloves
is what you need here. We're gonna give
them a quick mince. Pick it up, goes right in here. I've got about a
teaspoon of dry oregano. I might need a pinch
of kosher salt, and now we're gonna add some
fresh, beautiful greens. First of all, I have about
10 ounces of frozen spinach that I had thawed out and made sure I wrung
out all the water. So it looks kinda like this. This is spinach going right
here, but it comes in a package. So look for it in
the frozen aisle. And then I have two
beautiful herbs, parsley and basil for all the
good, big Italian flavors.
So I'm gonna chop up some
parsley, about a good cup or so. It is so important, you guys that you wring out all the
liquid from the spinach 'cause you don't want
your lasagna to be watery. All right, parsley goes in and then we've got some basil. Eyeball it, but, I don't
know, I love basil. I'm gonna do like a half a cup. Collect your leaves
and then kind of roll the basil leaves together
like this, you guys, and we kinda just
slice like ribbons. Let's mix up this
cheesy herby goodness to make our ricotta filling. I find that it helps
to drizzle a little bit of extra virgin olive oil because I'm using a lot
of part-skim cheese, I kinda need something
to move this party. So I'm gonna just drizzle
a little bit of this. Good-for-you fat and mix it up. See, this is better. Woo-hoo. This looks great! They're
all nice and soft. And some of them got nice and
charred too, which I appreciate. I'm gonna let it cool just a little bit so
that we can handle it.
All right, you
guys, let's do this. We're gonna start
with our pasta sauce. Now you can grab my
homemade pasta sauce video, or you can use pasta sauce
from a jar and spread it out. Okay. And I've got my eggplant slices. What you wanna do is
just kinda layer them. At this point if they
overlap, it's great. They've already cooked up real
nice so you won't hurt them. Now we have our ricotta filling. I just like to go in and
add on each eggplant. You're gonna use up half
of the ricotta filling now, and then half on another layer. My goal is just try to
spread it as far as possible so that every
single bite you take has enough of that
gorgeous cheese filling.
So here's that first layer. We're gonna go in with a
thinner layer of marinara in this point. Right. So spread the sauce
over the cheese. And we're just gonna repeat
the whole situation again, eggplant, you know what's
coming next, don't ya? All right, cheese. This is it. So you're gonna use
up the whole bit. So we've got spinach
in this ricotta.
We sneak that in for the kids. They haven't any clue,
and they love it. We're gonna add the last
little bit of sauce. You know what? Pour the sauce. Oh yeah. You're gonna spread this out. How easy is this, you
guys, really just layering. Layering there. Remember we had a little
bit of cheese left. We're gonna go in
with our mozzarella 'cause this layer here, you
guys, this is the melty, gooey goodness and
Parmesan, right? This baby is looking good
and ready for the oven. 15, 20 minutes is all we need. First we're gonna cover it and then we're gonna uncover it and give it a few more minutes until all the bubbly
goodness takes place. Oh my gosh. One last tip for you guys.
Let the lasagna settle for
a good 10 to 15 minutes before you cut through it. And then garnish with a
little bit of parsley or basil or what have you, to
make the perfect meal. Now, if you're looking
for a cozy dessert to finish this meal, be sure to check out
my Apple Strudel video. Don't forget to subscribe
and follow this channel for more delicious videos. For the Eggplant Lasagna recipe, head over to
themediterraneandish.com. I will see you later, ciao..
