This recipe is loosely based on the Greek and Turkish dish of moussaka, which is usually made with lamb and lots of cheese in the bechamel sauce, both of which I find hard to recreate in a satisfying way being a vegan. So, I went with the easier and simpler option of making a lasagna, but replacing the pasta with sliced eggplant and potatoes. This dish doesn’t have all the complexity of a moussaka, but honestly it’s a much easier and still very tasty and satisfying.

If you want to make this the quick way then you can use a large jar of store bought bolognese sauce to replace my homemade sauce below. Simply brown your ground meat (or meat alternative) in a frying pan and then add your jar of bolognese sauce and heat through for a couple of minutes and that’s your filling finished. For the home made sauce, follow the full method below

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 large or 2 medium eggplant, cut into half inch slices (or slightly thinner if you’re able). I like to do this along whichever edge will give me the biggest slices, which means slices that will cover the largest surface area when layered in the baking dish, but you can slice them whichever way is easiest for you.
4 medium potatoes (red or gold potatoes are both fine), sliced thinly across whichever side will give you the largest slices.
12 oz of ground beef or vegan alternative. Trader Joe’s or Gardein vegan ground beef are my preferred options. green lentils cooked separately and added to the sauce at the last minute also work well.
1 large yellow or white onion, roughly chopped.
1 large or two medium carrots, sliced.
2 cloves of garlic, minced.
2 x 15 oz cans of stewed tomatoes
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp oregano
2 bay leaves
4 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper

Ingredients for white sauce

2 Tbsp butter or vegan alternative
3 Tbsp plain flour
1 1/2 cups regular milk or nut milk alternative (unsweetened)

Method

Heat the oven to 400 F and grease a couple of large baking sheets (mine were 12 x 16 inches) with 1 Tbsp of olive oil each.
Place the sliced eggplant on one baking sheet and the sliced potatoes on the other, trying to ensure that none of the slices are overlapping. If your baking sheet is the same size as mine you should find that the eggplant covers about two thirds of a sheet and the potato will probably be a bit more than one whole sheet, in which case, use the extra space on the eggplant baking sheet for any potato overflow. You should now sprinkle over a couple of pinches of salt and oil the top of the vegetables, which I find it easiest to do with a can of spray oil, but if you don’t have that, try brushing oil over the slices with a pastry brush.
Place the eggplant and potatoes in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, during which time you’ll prepare the sauces.
(skip points 4 to 8 if you are using a store bought bolognese sauce) Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to a large frying pan and, on a medium heat, add the chopped onion and minced garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally until the onions turn translucent - about seven or eight minutes.
Next, add the sliced carrots with one teaspoon of dried oregano, the two bay leaves and a half a teaspoon of salt. Continue to cook on a medium heat for another five minutes, stirring occasionally.
If you have space in your frying pan, move over all the vegetables to one side and add the ground beef, or vegan alternative to the empty side, cooking and stirring until it’s well browned, then mix together with the vegetables and cook for another couple of minutes. To avoid burning the veggies while cooking the beef, I move the frying pan to a small burner on the stove and position the pan so that only the half where the meat is cooking is over the flame. If you’re a more cautious chef and you want to avoid any risk of overcooking the onions and carrots then brown the meat in a separate pan.
Add the two cans of stewed tomatoes and the one tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Bring everything to a boil and stir together well, then turn down the heat to low and replace the lid on the pan. Allow this to simmer gently while you prepare the white sauce.
By this stage the sliced eggplant and potatoes will probably have reached their 20 minutes in the oven, but they need to sit and cool for 10 minutes after coming out so you can handle them easily. Just set them aside while you continue working on the sauces
Get a small saucepan and melt the butter or vegan alternative over a low heat.
Add the three Tbsp of plain flour and stir it into the melted butter until you have a smooth, thick rue.
Start adding the milk, half a cup at a time. Stir the milk into the rue until it’s fully blended and smooth again before adding the next half cup. The sauce may thicken up very quickly to begin with, but that will make it easier to stir out any lumps and achieve a smooth consistency. Don’t let it start to boil at any point before you have added all the milk.
Once all the milk is in the pan and you’ve got a nice smooth consistency, bring it to a gentle simmer just for a few seconds while stirring continuously. We are aiming for a consistency roughly the thickness of warm custard, or slightly thicker. If you think it is too thick, add a bit more milk a tablespoon at a time, but be careful not to add too much liquid because if you go over the top, it’s really tricky to add any flour at this stage to thicken it up again. Now turn off the stove and set the pan aside

Building the lasagna

Grease a medium sized, deep baking dish (mine is an oval, 2 inch deep 10 x 8 inch ceramic dish) and place a layer of potatoes over the bottom, overlapping slightly so that there are no gaps visible.
Pour half the red sauce over the potatoes and then make a layer of eggplant on top of the sauce. Now pour the remaining red sauce over the eggplant, making sure not to over fill the dish because you still need to put more potatoes and white sauce on top. If you have extra red sauce, just keep it in a Tupperware to have with pasta another day.
Layer the rest of the potatoes over the top of the red sauce, again overlapping to avoid gaps as far as possible and then spread the white sauce on top, covering evenly.
Place this back in the oven at 400 F and bake for 30 to 40 minutes until the top starts to turn a golden color.
Remove from the oven and allow to stand and cool for 10 minutes before serving with a side salad.

Depending on the exact size of your baking dish, you may find you have extra potato and eggplant that you couldn’t fit into the lasagna. These will probably be only partially cooked from 20 minutes in the oven, so if you store them in the fridge for a meal later in the week, you’ll need to remember to finish cooking them through properly in a frying pan before serving them with anything else. You could put any extra eggplant into a pasta dish with leftover red sauce and any potato could be fried util crispy like chips and eaten as a snack.

Eggplant & Potato Lasagna