chuckro | On the topic of eggplant lasagna (Reply)

I made an eggplant lasanga on Monday night. The first thing to note is that I did the Williams-Sonoma recipe, and they are, by nature, not designed to be quick and easy. It's an annoying amount of work, even more than a normal lasagna. You need to salt and drain the eggplant, then roast all the veggies and pre-cook the noodles (it only bakes for 20 minutes and is relatively dry, so you can't use no-boil noodles), then assemble the thing, then bake it again. And it's a very problematic to cut when it's still hot, as I learned when I covered our breakfast nook with a spatula-full of it. It's tasty, but not really worth this amount of work.

I think my next attempt will incorporate some of my "faux-moussaka" experiment--microwave the salted eggplant to dry it faster (thank you, Cook's Illustrated), broil the eggplant in large rounds (instead of roasting in small dice) and use an actual sauce instead of diced tomatoes, which should allow me to use no-boil noodles. The one thing I'll definitely be keeping, though, is the cheese: 11 oz of goat cheese to 1 cup of ricotta and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Delightfully creamy and tangy.

Also, a whole lasanga is food for 8 people; or feeds two people for a week. You'd think I'd remember this by now.