Recipe for Russian Lasagna

A Vegetarian Russian Lasagna Recipe

This recipe is for a healthy vegetarian, eggplant and tomato sauce based lasagna, that was created in Russia.

Ingredients (for 4 people):

* 2 medium eggplants (about 1,5 lb. each), cut into quarter inch slices
* 5 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil
* 1 small onion, chopped
* 2 tablespoons sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 tablespoon dried basil
* 15 oz. canned tomatoes
* 12 dry lasagna noodles
* 5 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
* 1/2 lb. mozzarella cheese, or more if you like

Instructions

1) Preheat the stove. Place half of the eggplant slices on a skillet; put both sides or 2 tablespoons. tablespoons oil. Wait about 10 minutes until a nice golden brown crust has formed over the eggplants, flipping them once while frying them. Reserve in a dish. Repeat with remaining slices and 2 tablespoons of oil. Preheat the oven to 300 °F

2) Preparing the tomato sauce: Heat up over medium heat the remaining butter in a saucepan. Put in and cook the onion until translucent. Add sugar, salt, basil and tomato juice, bring to a boil over high heat, put a tablespoon of tomato paste, reduce the heat setting to low, simmer 15 minutes, stirring from time to time.

3) Cook the lasagna noodles as per package directions in water, minus one or two minutes. Put 1 cup of the tomato sauce we just did over bottom of lasagna baking pan. Put half the lasagna, so that the noodles are placed one next to another, making sure there is no gap between them. Over the layer of noodles put some eggplant slices, then half of the tomato sauce and half the Parmesan, lastly half the mozzarella.

4) Repeat this layering process once more with the remaining half of all ingredients, lasagna noodles, eggplant, tomato sauce, Parmesan and mozzarella.

5) Bake 40 minutes until the lasagna is fully cooked. Pull out of the oven. Let stand for 10 minutes, to give a bit of time to your russian lasagna to become more firm.
Serve and enjoy your meal.