Eggplant & Kale Lasagna

 

This dish was born in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. The power was out for 12 days. Luckily, I packed every empty space in the freezer with containers of water days before the storm hit - and those big blocks of ice kept my stash of frozen summer veggies frozen for a few days.

I cooked up everything that was starting to defrost - check out the blog entries for Storm Soup and Veggie Chili. Then my friend and co-worker, Mary, let me put the still frozen items in her freezer, where they stayed until the power came back on - and we are still enjoying them (check out the soon to be posted recipe for Roasted Ratatoille and polenta lasana with fresh mozarella cheese).

 

When our CSA share was full of eggplant, two and three and four eggplants every week, I prepped one of them for rollatini by slicing it lengthwise, dredging in flour, then dipping in milk, coating with breadcrumbs, placing the slices on a foil lined baking sheet coated with olive oil, spraying the tops with olive oil cooking spray and baking at 400 F for 30 minutes until they were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Then I froze the slices, separated by waxed paper.

 

Later in the season, I sauteed a bunch of kale with some onions and froze that.

After the storm, both of those frozen packages were among the first to defrost, and there was some leftover ricotta and mozerella cheese that had been in the refrigeratorand was now residing in a cooler filled with ice, so, I invented eggplant and kale lasagna.

 

I used the eggplant slices like lasagna noodles in a casserole dish and layered:

pasta sauce

eggplant

ricotta

sauteed kale

shredded mozarella

then repeated the layers until I got to the top of the dish, finishing with sauce and mozarella.

I baked it at 350 F for an hour.

Fabulous.