Homemade Recipes

Ingredients:

1 eggplant

3-4 zucchini

Salt

Extra virgin olive oil

1 jar marina sauce (we like garlic and olive oil)

1/2 sweet onion, diced

1/2 green pepper, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

1lb 99% fat free ground turkey (we season the meat with garlic powder as it browns)

5 sprigs thyme, removed from sprig

2-3 oz basil

12 oz part skim ricotta or Tofutti

1/2 cup fresh or frozen chopped spinach

1 cup pesto

Pinch nutmeg

Fresh Mozzarella

Directions:

1. Slice the eggplant and zucchini, place in a colander over the sink and salt generously. Seriously. A lot. Really generous. You'll wash it off before putting it in the lasagna...and this will save you from having a ridiculously soupy lasagna-ish mess. Let the salt rest on the veggies for at least 30 minutes.

2. While waiting, brown the meat in a sauté pan. Like I mentioned earlier, we season the meat as we do this since the meat doesn't have much fat/flavor.

3. In a sauce pan over medium heat, add 1 turn of the pan olive oil. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add a pinch of salt, the green pepper and garlic; cook down until the pepper starts to soften. Add browned meat and jar of sauce. Add thyme, half of the basil leaves and salt & pepper to taste. Simmer for 30 minutes or so.

4. In a mixing bowl, stir together ricotta (or Tofutti), spinach, pesto, remaining basil and nutmeg. (We also added a pinch of salt and pepper here).

5. Rinse the salt off of the vegetables and pat them dry.

6. Build the lasagna! Start with the turkey meat sauce on the bottom, top with an eggplant layer, then ricotta, zucchini, ricotta, meat sauce and finish with fresh sliced mozzarella. (Do this in whatever order you want...but put tomato sauce on the bottom so the veggies don't burn.) Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes; broil an additional 5 minutes to brown the cheese. I added some more basil to the top after it was finished cooking.