Eggplant-sagna

Cookie Monster and I were headed out of town last week and I needed to use up the produce and perishables in the fridge. It was pretty much a mini Iron Chef in Chez Stadium. Here were the ingredients that needed to be used up: an eggplant, yellow squash, tomato sauce, cottage cheese, plain Greek yogurt, cheese, spinach, carrots and a few other assorted vegetables. Obviously I made Hugh Jass salads with the spinach, carrots and miscellaneous veggies, but the eggplant was presenting a problem. Allez cuisine!

Enter: eggplant-sagna. I sliced the eggplant (after peeling. I don't like the texture of the peel) horizontally as thin as possible to make "lasagna noodles" and did the same with the squash. Then I combined the remaining cottage cheese (there wasn't much--maybe 1/2 cup) with the tomato sauce and added garlic powder, dried basil and fresh oregano from my garden to combine. I then layered the eggplant, squash and tomato sauce mixture to form the base. Next came more eggplant slices and tomato mixture (the squash had run out by this time. It was small). Then I ran out of cottage cheese, so enter: Greek yogurt. Tomato sauce and Greek yogurt sounds like a weird combination, but I laugh in the face of adversity. Ha Ha Ha! (See? That's me laughing in the face of adversity.) Really, it tasted fine. I just added more sauce and herbs to make the same thing as before. Then I completed my final layer of eggplant and sauce, and topped the whole thing with shredded cheddar, provolone and a few sprinklings of goat cheese. Here's what it looked like before getting baked. Ha! My eggplant-sagna got stoned!

And here is the melty, cheesy, eggplant-y goodness after getting totally, like, baked dude in a 375 oven.

Since this was essentially all vegetables, I was not reluctant to add a starch: I made a small side of whole wheat elbow macaroni to go alongside it. It's like the inverse of lasagna: vegetables in the casserole, starch as a side! It's Crazy Inverse Lasagna Land!

Ok, did I get baked too?

Anyhoo, I used up the small remaining amount of the tomato sauce over the elbows and it was delightful. The one thing I would do next time is par-cook the eggplant before assembling the 'sagna. I think an additional 5-10 minutes for the eggplant grilled in a pan would've made this a lot better. As it was, the eggplant was still a little tough. The 'sagna was good, but I think that would've made it great.

And my fridge was naked inside after this dinner. Mission Accomplished! Where's my giant-ass banner?