Eggplant lasagna with goat cream cheese

Welcome welcome!
Since we are all spending time at home, we might as well cook some nice food, don't we? This is my all-time favourite lasagna recipe. It has been on my German blog for a while and I have now taken the time to translate it. My mum and I created this recipe by trying out different lasagnas and combining all the things we liked about them. In the end I will also tell you what you could change in the recipe to spice it up and/or replace things you don't like.

Servings: 8                Cooks in approx. 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 4 small eggplants
• 800g minced meat (pork and beef)
• 300g goat cream cheese
• dried lasagne sheets
• 600g gratin cheese (Gouda or Emmental)
• olive oil
• sea salt or coarse salt

For the tomato sauce (or 5 glasses of ready-made sauce):

• 2 litre sieved tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 onions
• salt and pepper
• dried herbs (oregano, basil and bay leaves)
• optionally a splash of dry red wine 

Directions:

1.     Lay a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray. Scatter some sea salt or coarse salt on it. Heat up your oven on 200°C/400°F (in the air circulation mode, if you have one). Wash and cut your eggplants into slices that have a thickness of about 1 cm. Lay them on top of the salt and scatter some olive oil. Bake the eggplant slices about 15 to 20 minutes, turning them at halftime and scattering some more olive oil. Take them out after that and leave them to cool down. You can turn off the oven, if it takes too long to finish the lasagna. The slices should be soft, but not entirely cooked. 
2.     Peel and finely chop the onions. Push the garlic through a press and steam both in a little bit of olive oil until the onions become translucent. Add the minced meat and fry it until it becomes crumbly. Season it with salt and pepper.
3.     Add the cans of sieved tomatoes and at least one can of water. Season it with salt and pepper, the herbs and the red wine. Bring it to boil and then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for about half an hour, stirring it regularly. If needed, season again with the spices. If you're using ready-made sauce you won't have to cook it for that long, just let it simmer with the wine for about 10 minutes and adjust the spices if needed. Don't forget to take out the bay leaves.
4.     Heat up the oven again on 200°C/400°F (or if the package of dried lasagna sheets says something else, follow the given information). 
5.     Layer all the ingredients into a casserole dish in the following order: tomato sauce, lasagna sheets, tomato sauce and eggplants. The last layer should be eggplants or lasagne sheets. Spread the goat creme cheese and on top of it the gratin cheese. 
6.     Cover the casserole dish with aluminium foil and put it in the oven. Bake it for about 20 minutes (or follow the instructions of the lasagna sheets). Remove the foil for the last 5 minutes to gratinate. Enjoy!

Here are a few changes you could make:

• If you want to make the lasagna low carb you could just leave out the lasagna sheets. Just take note that you won't need to leave it as much in the oven. 
• If you don't like goat cheese you could easily swap it out for a normal cream cheese. But you should give it a try! At home we don't typically put in béchamel sauce into our lasagna and therefore the cheese adds a nice creaminess.
• Not a fan of eggplants? Not a problem! Just take courgettes/zucchinis, cut them into smaller slices and give them a quick sauté. You can of course be extra and do courgettes AND eggplants (follow Hannah Montana and "get the best of both worlds!").
• If you want to go veggie you could either just leave the meat out and maybe add some carrots, mushrooms and other vegetables or you can cook it with green spelt (they add that minced meet texture). Just follow the instructions on the package of the green spelt. 

I hope you will all enjoy this lasagna as much as we do! If you do try it out please send me pictures and/or your opinion. I hope you are all having a delicious time with loads of good snacks and food. Until very soon,

Izzy

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