The idea for this literally came to me one night while sitting on the couch. I had been thinking about what I could make with eggplant besides eggplant parmesan. I'd never really made much else with it. So, I thought about doing a lasagna but using the eggplant as the noodles. We tend to eat a lot of carbs so I thought this would be a different take on traditional lasagna. My husband liked this so much that he took it for lunch 2 days in a row and raved about it for a few days. Normally when we make a lasagna or casserole dish, we end up with one or 2 pieces left since it's just the two of us. I really hate wasting food though since it's basically just wasting money and there are people who aren't as lucky as we are to have the opportunity to have a good meal. So we try and do the best we can with our leftovers. Anyways, if you have never used eggplant before or are trying to think of something new to do with it, I would give this a try. I know I'm biased because I made it, but it's really really good. I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with it!
Ingredients
1 medium eggplant
1 small zuchinni
1 16 oz container of lowfat cottage cheese (Daisy Brand if your grocery store has it)
2 Tbsp of pesto (homemade or store bought)
1 1/2 cups of lowfat mozzarella cheese
pepper
salt
3 eggs, beaten with a little water added
3/4 cup of all purpose flour
1-1 1/2 cups of Italian style panko (I wouldn't recommend using regular bread crumbs)
homemade or storebough tomato sauce
Directions
1. Cut the ends off the eggplant and then peel off the skin using a potato/vegetable peeler.
2. Cut in half widthwise and then cut into about 1/2 think slices (they won't all be the exact same size-but you can trim them to be more consistent)
3. Prepare a bowl of flour, a bowl with the eggs, and a bowl with the panko. Dip the eggplant slices in that order then place all the eggplant slices onto a baking sheet.
4. Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes or until the panko starts to turn golden brown and eggplant is crispy
5. While eggplant is baking, mix together the pesto, cottage cheese, and a little salt and pepper.
6. Spoon a little tomato sauce into bottom of 8x8 baking dish
7. Lay approximately 6 slices of eggplant in the bottom (they probably won't line up exactly and there may be a few gaps, but that's ok)
8. Cover the eggplant slices with the cottage cheese mixture.
9.Top with grated zuchinni, then sprinkle on some mozzarella.
10. Top mixture with 6 more eggplant slices
11. Pour about 1-1 1/2 cups of tomato sauce over top (just eyeball it-don't use too much sauce)
12. Top with more mozarella cheese
13. Spray a piece of foil with non stick cooking spray, cover the lasagna and bake for about 40 minutes.
I didnt have enough eggplant pieces to make multiple layers and they wouldn't have fit in the pan anyways since the eggplant pieces are thicker than noodles. However, I did have just a few pieces left that I used to top the lasagna with which gave it a bit more texture.
