I took a whole bunch of pictures of the process of this lasagna and managed to leave out the layer of eggplant!! How very annoying.

Here is the progression, sans eggplant. First a layer of pasta, then the first layer of meat sauce.

Then a hefty layer of parmesan:

Then a layer of cultured cottage cheese (yes it’s got a bit of a yogurt flavor)

Then the layer of EGGPLANT that is missing then you repeat the whole thing (the second time I did not put eggplant as the first layer was pretty thick–I sliced them in circles and lay them down on top of the cottage cheese) Then this is the finished product before cooking. After the second layer I finish with a layer of pasta and then just s tiny bit of sauce and cheese to top it off lightly:

This is overflowing so I put it on a cookie rack in the oven.

So the recipe:

Red meat sauce

1 lb grass fed beef (I have a very inexpensive source for organic ground beef so I’m eating red meat a whole lot more than I used to!)

1 small onion

3 cloves garlic

14 oz can diced tomatoes (these happen to have roasted hot peppers in them so the sauce will be spicy!)

1/4 cup frozen pesto sauce (from our garden)

Salt to taste

Saute onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil. Toss in beef and brown. Pour in can of tomatoes and the pesto sauce. Cook just long enough for flavors to blend. (this is a meat heavy sauce…I don’t like heavy tomato in my lasagna)

So I cooked the lasagna pasta before I started all this. I used brown rice lasagna pasta. I only cook the noodles for about 5 minutes. I take them out when they are still very firm as they cook a lot in the oven and aid in keeping the lasagna firm and not watery.

Also before putting this together brush slices of eggplant with oil and put under broiler for a couple of minutes until soft.

I placed one layer of pasta at the bottom of the dish then put a layer of meat sauce, followed by a generous amount of parmesan, followed by a layer of cottage cheese then a layer of eggplant.

Repeat.

Finish with a last layer of pasta, a very small bit of sauce, parmesan and lastly I put a small layer of mozzarella for looks.

Cook for (I just went to check on it) it was perfectly done and took about 50 minutes. I did not heat the oven up first though so go by how it looks on top…nice and lightly browned, like this:

It did not overflow. You can of course use a cheese other than the cultured cottage cheese. I used it simply because it needed to be eaten and I cook completely based on what is currently in my fridge.