Eggplant Lasagna

I had a large amount of the delicious spaghetti sauce I made earlier this week leftover. I wanted to use it but did not want to actually do "spaghetti" again. I thought about a typical lasagna, for which this sauce would be amazing, but since we had pasta once this week, I really did not want for us to eat it again. So, instead I decided to try a lasagna using slivers of eggplant in place of noodles.

This worked out really well, and tasted a lot lighter than my typical lasagna. Also using the lighter cheeses and ricotta made us feel a little less guilty about indulging in this Italian comfort food.

Eggplant Lasagna

1 large eggplant (or 2 if you wanted to make a thicker lasagna)
1 packed cup part skim ricotta
1 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 cups spaghetti sauce

2 % milk shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese
part skim shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel and slice eggplant into thin long strips. Lightly salt the eggplant and let sit for 10 minutes. Pat dry with a paper towel. Place on baking sheets coated with non-stick cooking spray. Bake for about 10 minutes.

Combine ricotta, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, salt and pepper in small bowl and set aside.

Coat a rectangular or square baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Spoon a tablespoon of sauce in the bottom of the dish. Place slices of eggplant in dish so that eggplant is slightly overlapping and the bottom of the dish can no longer be seen. Alternate dropping spoonfuls of the ricotta mixture and the spaghetti sauce. Top with shredded cheddar, mozzarella and parmesan (I usually use about 2 tbsp of each per layer).  Then start over again with the eggplant and repeat the same steps until you use the eggplant up (about 4 layers).

Cover final layer with more cheese than previous layers - enough to cover the top entirely with cheese.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until cheese is completely melted and bubbly.