Potluck Lasagna

Whew, I'm exhausted. I just spent a straight three hours putting together a vegetable lasagna for tomorrow night's potluck dinner celebrating the end of our adoption class. Here's the recipe. It needs an extremely big, deep dish about 24 inches long. One of those aluminum square dishes designed for roasting large turkeys would work well.

Deep Demanding Grilled Vegetable Lasagna
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3 large red or yellow peppers
7 small eggplants or 2 large ones
1 onion
6 cloves of garlic
2 pounds of spinach
2 large jars tomato sauce, store-bought or homemade
a large bunch of broccoli
2 big containers of whole milk ricotta cheese
grated hard, flavorful cheese (e.g. parmesan, romano, asiago)
small amount of goat cheese
2 containers fresh mozzarella

1. Roll out the lasagna sheets using a manual pasta maker. I use 3 eggs, a little bit of salt and a combination of half semolina flour/half white flour. 3 eggs is the right amount for about 4 layers, although you may need slightly more. Once rolled, separate the fresh sheets with paper towels or sprinkled flour.

2. Do the long, long, laborious vegetable prep. a) mince onions and garlic, fry them in olive oil until translucent, then throw in the spinach and cook it down, adding salt, pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Set aside. b) grill the red peppers under a broiler under medium heat until their skin browns and separates from the flesh. Peel the skin off, cut the flesh into strips, save the pepper juice but throw away the seeds, set aside. c) cut up the broccoli and eggplant, put onto separate trays. Brush them with a combination of olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe some ancho chile pepper. Broil them under high heat until they are cooked and just slightly browned. This will probably take 2-3 shifts under the broiler, and itneeds to be watched very closely. Set aside.

3. Boil the fresh lasagna sheets. They should all be thrown in a very large pot with hot boiling water. Pour in some oil and stir them vigorously to keep them from sticking to each other. As soon as they become loose and flexible (no more than 1-2 minutes) immediately drain and pour cold water on them. Then put some more olive oil on them and slosh them around a bit so they don't stick together while you're getting the layer-building started.

4. Build the layers. Suggested order:

- base layer of tomato sauce
- lasagna sheets
- ricotta cheese, spinach, small amount of crumbled goat cheese, sauce
- lasagna sheets
- grilled eggplant, fresh mozzarella slices, sauce
- lasagna sheets
- grilled broccoli, more ricotta
- lasagna sheets
- grilled red peppers, grated hard cheese, sauce
- lasagna sheets
- top layer of sauce