Eggplant lasagna in a meat sauce

As you can probably guess, I am a big fan of pasta. One of my favorite pastas to make is lasagna. Here is a lasagna I made one day when my neighbors came over for dinner. 

This is an eggplant lasagna in a meat sauce. Serving lasagna, smothered in meat sauce is an idea I got from a recent visit to a restaurant. Here’s how I put this together.

Sauce

Olive oil

1 lb. ground beef

1 onion, diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

1 jalapeño, diced

1 tsp. basil

1 tsp. thyme

1 tsp. marjoram

1 tsp. oregano

1 bay leaf

1 cup of red wine

6 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced

1 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes

1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes

And Then

6 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced

1 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes

Lasagna

4 strips of bacon

Olive oil

1 eggplant, sliced fairly thin

1 lb. of mozzarella cheese

1 lb. of lasagna noodles, uncooked

1/2 cup of red wine

Cajun seasoning

Preparation

Start with the sauce by heating a large dutch oven. Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom and then add the ground beef. Stir and when the beef loses most of its pink color, add the onion, celery and jalapeño. Stir and then add the basil, thyme, marjoram, oregano and bay leaf. Stir to mix and let that sweat down for about ten minutes. 

Add the garlic and stir. After a couple of minutes, add the wine. Bring that to a boil and let it reduce by half. Add the San Marzano tomatoes and break them up with a knife and fork. Add the can of crushed tomatoes and stir. Let that simmer gently for ten minutes. Turn off the heat and keep warm. 

Take a large cast iron skillet and cook the bacon until crisp. Save the bacon. Don’t eat it! Cook the egg plant slices, a few at a time, in the bacon fat until tender. Now very soon the bacon fat will disappear. When that happens, add olive oil. Once all of the eggplant slices are tender, rinse out the cast iron pan because now you will use that to hold the lasagna. 

Place a thin layer of the sauce in the cast iron pan. Place a layer of the uncooked lasagna noodles over the sauce. Break some up to cover the areas that the whole pasta can’t cover. Place the eggplant over the pasta and use it all. Add another layer of sauce over the eggplant and then the bacon and a layer of pasta. Add a layer of sauce and then a layer of cheese. Add a final layer of pasta, a heavy layer of sauce and then a real thick layer of cheese. Pour the half cup of wine over the lasagna and sprinkle it with cajun seasoning. 

Place the cast iron pan of lasagna on a baking sheet to catch anything that bubbles over. Bake the lasagna in a 380º oven for about an hour until the cheese is very brown on top. Let it set up for about fifteen minutes while you doctor up the remaining sauce. 

Heat the leftover sauce to a simmer. Add the garlic and stir. Add the second can of San Marzano tomatoes and break them up with a knife and fork. Let that simmer gently for about ten minutes. 

Serving

Serve large slices of lasagna smothered in the sauce. We also had homemade bread, sausage and peppers, seared broccoli, red wine from Italy and a fruit salad for dessert. Life is good!