Eggplant Lasagna Debacle

Sarah and Laura both suggested I check out Pinterest, so without really know what I was getting into, I stumbled upon an infinite resource of yummy recipes that are just begging to be tried! I feel like I’m most attracted to recipes that seem a little out of the ordinary and delicious, which tend to be plentiful on vegan and vegetarian sites. I am neither vegan nor vegetarian, but I don’t like cooking meat other than fish, so it works out! After my first survey of Pinterest recipes, I decided to purchase the ingredients for eggplant bread lasagna. I was intrigued, lots of people said really good things and I happened to have 2 small eggplants leftover from the exploratory purchase the previous week.

I was going to replace the bread with whole wheat lasagna noodles, but they didn’t exist at my ever-changing Super Selectos. I should have taken the clue and turned back then, but I didn’t. I bought bread at the bakery across the street and continued on. The first step was to heat some olive oil and medium to high heat while chopping 4-6 cloves of garlic. I decided 4 was sufficient since I get tired of mincing garlic after about 3 cloves, so I added them to the oil while I finished the 4th not really questioning what “sweating” the garlic meant. When I turned around a minute later to add the 4th, my first 3 cloves were officially charred completely black. Oops. (Even after googling sweating garlic, I’m not sure what went wrong.) I decided charred garlic would just add a little extra flavor and pressed on.

After adding the other spices and chopped tomatoes to simmer, I sliced my eggplant. It was suggested to cut them into 1/4” slices. I don’t have a ruler, so I guesstimated and figured it wasn’t a big deal that some of my 1/4” slices were paper thin at the top and closer to the thickness of a deck of cards at the bottom. Well, 20 minutes later when I removed them from the oven, I discovered it was a big deal. About half of my eggplant slices (the paper thin parts, surprise, surprise!) were completely charred to the bottom of the pan. Hmmm…no problem, it’ll just add a little crunch!

It said to toast the bread in the oven, so I sliced my bakery-fresh artisan roll and placed the slices in the warm oven. My dear friend Angie called, so we skyped as I added some shriveled mushrooms, a baggie of 2011 carrot coins and tried to deplete my excess of white beans in my simmering sauce and scraped the eggplant slices from the pan. We were having such a delightful chat that I forgot about my bread in the oven until I smelled a faint aroma of burning…a different one from the garlic… and eggplant. Shoot! They weren’t badly burned, so I decided they were going to be covered with sauce and baked anyway, bringing them to the perfect texture. I paused our skype conversation until the lasagna had been assembled and put in the oven to bake.

As I began to build the lasagna, I noticed a shortage of eggplant. The recipe called for a large eggplant. I figured 1 large=2 small. I figured wrong. I was supposed to have enough eggplant for 2 layers. My charcoal-crusted eggplant ran out before the first layer was adequately laid. This perplexed me. So, the paucity of eggplant made me realize this recipe was now going to be toasted bread with homemade marinara that had become a dumping ground for all my cast off vegetables. I took a deep breath, threw some ricotta on top and put it in the oven to hope for the best and finish my conversation. 40 minutes later, I removed it from the oven only to find that the bottom layer of marinara had completely blackened into the bottom of the pan because I’d had to move the rack down one level from the top because it was too tall to fit otherwise.

Well, in the game of cooking, you win some and you lose some! I’m actually pretty impressed that I managed to burn four different aspects of this lasagna for four different reasons. Pretty impressive! While it definitely wasn’t the taste sensation I was hoping for, I have eaten it for three meals and there’s still a part of me that’s looking forward to that last serving! :)