What is one of the major rules of cooking? Don't cook a new recipe when you are having guests over because you never know how it will turn out. This weekend, I reluctantly broke that rule.
I had my mother-in-law and her husband in town, and planned to make ricotta and spinach stuffed eggplant cannelloni. They are just like regular cannelloni, but instead of using noodles, it would be thinly sliced, roasted eggplant (great for any low-carb eaters). I bought eggplant this week, and all the ingredients, and was ready to go. Right before starting to get dinner ready, I realized that the eggplant that I bought were too small to act as noodles. Panicking, I decided to make it into a sort of lasagne instead. The verdict? Well, there were no leftovers, and everyone had seconds, so I would say it turned out really well. Here is the recipe;
1 500g container ricotta
1 cup 1% cottage cheese
1 pkg. frozen spinach, thawed
2 medium eggplants, thinly sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste
2 cups Marinara Sauce
1 ½ cups havarti cheese
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Thinly slice both eggplants so that the pieces are about ¼ of an inch thick. Place in a single layer on a greased cooking sheet. Drizzle 2 tbsp olive oil and about ¼ tsp salt on top so both sides of eggplant are evenly coated. Roast for 15 minutes.
While eggplant is cooking, prepare the filling. Squeeze excess water from thawed spinach. To do this, overlap about 3 paper towels on top of one another. Place spinach in the middle, and wrap paper towel around spinach. Squeeze water into sink.
In a large bowl, combine ricotta, drained spinach, cottage cheese and ¼ tsp salt.
In a large rectangular Pyrex dish, layer the lasagne; marinara sauce, eggplant, ricotta mixture, and finally Havarti. You should have enough mixture to do 2-3 layers. Make sure you finished the layers with Havarti on top.
Cook for 45 minutes in 400 degree oven, or until cheese is golden. Let stand for a few minutes before cutting.
