Aubergine/Eggplant/Courgette “lasagna” – vegetarian

As I had a courgette which needed to be put to use and some older tomatoes, I decided to cook up a meal involving a good tomato sauce. We eat so many tomatoes yet we often end up with some, which are only good for cooking. In addition, on this particular night, we had a vegetarian for dinner and therefore I decided to cook up a vegetarian inspired “lasagna”. Instead of meat and pasta, I chose to use aubergines. It is a bit time consuming, as there are many ingredients – and it is not exactly low fat – but it turned out absolutely delicious! And the tomato sauce used, can easily be used for other dishes as well – like pasta with chicken, stuffed peppers, proper lasagna and other dishes, where you would use a tomato based sauce.

The dish is made up of 3 parts, – fried aubergines, tomato sauce and bechamel sauce. Start with the preparation of the aubergines and while they drain, – prepare the sauces.

Aubergines – Ingredients:

2 large aubergines

salt

3 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup bread crumbs

Olive oil

Method:

Before anything else, – start preparing the aubergines. They need to drain! Cut the aubergines into slices approximately 1 1/2-2 cm thick. Generously add salt to both sides, place them single layered on a bed of paper towel, top with paper towel. Let them drain for at least 1 hour. Leaving them for longer, is absolutely fine.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius.

After an hour – or whatever time you left them, rinse the slices under cold water, to remove the salt, and pad them dry with a tea towel or paper towel.

Whisk the eggs and place next to plate with flour and a plate with bread crumbs. Line a baking tray with baking paper and grease it by brushing it with olive oil. Dip each slice in flour followed by egg and finally bread crumbs. If you run out of flour or bread crumbs, add some more. You might end up using a bit more than 1/2 cup of each. Place them on the baking tray. Lightly drizzle with olive oil. Bake for approximately 20-25 minutes,- turning them half way. The should be crisp and golden. As I could not fit them all to one baking tray, I pan fried the rest. That also works.

While waiting for the aubergines to drain, prepare the tomato sauce and the bechamel sauce.

Tomato sauce – Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large zucchini/courgette – finely diced

1 handful cherry tomatoes – finely diced

2 finely chopped cloves of garlic

1 finely chopped onion

1 can of tomatoes

1 handful fresh basil – chopped

Salt and Pepper

Method:

Prepare your vegetables, cleaning and dicing them, keeping them in separate bowls. Add the oil to a sauce pan and heat for a minute. Add the garlic and onion. Fry until golden and soft. Add the courgette/zucchini, tomatoes and canned tomatoes and cook while occasionally giving the mix a stir. Cook uncovered for approximately 10 minutes. Add chopped basil, salt and pepper.

Bechamel sauce – Ingredients:

25 g butter/shortening

2 tbsp flour

300 ml milk

dash of ground nutmeg

1 cup shredded mozerella

salt and pepper

Method:

Melt the butter. Add the flour and mix this together with the melted butter over medium heat until it comes together and forms into a paste. Slowly add the milk stirring it in with the paste until it mixes, reaches boiling point and thickens into a sauce. Finally add the cheese, the nutmeg and a bit of salt and pepper and stir until the cheese has melted. This only takes a few minutes.

Assembling the “lasagna”:

Extra ingredients:

1 diced fresh buffalo mozzerella cheese

1 good handful of shredded mozzerella

a few sprigs of fresh basil to garnish

Method:

Grease a large oven proof baking dish, measuring approximately 25×35 cm. Spread out a layer of tomato sauce (half of the prepared sauce). Add a layer of bechamel sauce (half of the sauce) add a layer of aubergine slices. Repeat adding the remaining tomato sauce, bechamel sauce and slices of aubergine. Add a dice of fresh buffalo mozzerella cheese to each slice of aubergine. Sprinkle the whole dish with a thin layer of shredded mozzerella.

Bake in the oven at 190 degrees for approximately 25 minutes – or until the cheese has melted and you can see the sauce bubbling.

Garnish with fresh basil.

It all sounds very complicated…it is not. Once you get started, it is super easy and you can easily do the tomato sauce in advance.

Serve with salad.