A yummy dinner from leftover savoury mince (and some inspiration!)

Olwen Anderson's Blog

Friday, August 20, 2010

The problem last night: There’s leftover thawed savoury mince in the fridge. It has to be heated and eaten today, or wasted. And I want a ‘proper’ dinner. What to do?

The solution: Make a lasagne-style dish from some eggplant plus what’s on hand. It was time to raid the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

Eggplant makes a really great substitute for pasta sheets – the rest of the dish would come from inspiration. Here’s what I did:

Pre-warm the oven to about 180°C
Cut the eggplant into slices about 1cm thick (leave the skin on). Spray with oil and sprinkle a little salt over. If you’ve got 30 minutes spare to allow them to soften that’s great; if not, that’s OK too.
Turn on the griller (or the char grill section of the barbeque) and cook the slices until they’re brown and soft enough to eat, but not falling apart.
Heat up the savoury mince in a saucepan. I added a splodge of tomato paste for extra zing.
Steam some sweet potato or pumpkin pieces. The quantity will depend on the number of people you’re feeding, and the size of the baking dish the finished ‘lasagne’ will sit in. Mash the sweet potato/pumpkin when its cooked.
If you have silverbeet or spinach in the fridge steam that too (separately). Drain it very well.
You can add other vegetables too depending on what’s in your fridge. Some ideas: Roasted capsicum slices; olives; tomatoes, squash, zucchini.
Start layering the ‘lasagne’ eggplant slices, then savoury mince, more eggplant, the silverbeet, more eggplant, etc (you get the idea). Once you’ve added the final layer of eggplant, top the dish with the mashed sweet potato/pumpkin.
Sprinkle an extra special topping over the mash. I used some feta; you could use pine nuts instead, or walnuts, or olives, or sundried tomatoes. Even chopped fresh herbs.
Put the dish in the oven to warm through – it will take only 15 minutes. Serve with a green salad, or some steamed green beans.