Roasted Aubergine Lasagne with Ricotta

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200°C, or 180°C fan-forced, and find a baking dish about 30cm by 20cm.
2. Warm the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds, until it smells sweet and has taken no colour.
3. Scrape in both jars of aubergine sauce and the tin of tomatoes.
4. Pour the water into the empty jars, put the lids back on, shake, and tip that into the pan. A thick sauce holds a lot back against the glass.
5. Simmer for 8 minutes, then season with salt and pepper. It should pour off the spoon rather than sit on it.
6. Beat the ricotta, egg, 80g of the parmesan, the pesto, lemon zest and milk together until spreadable, then season.
7. Spread a few spoonfuls of sauce over the base of the dish, just enough to stop the sheets sticking.
8. Lay pasta sheets over it in a single layer, breaking them to fit rather than overlapping. Overlaps stay hard.
9. Spoon over a quarter of the remaining sauce, then dot with a quarter of the ricotta and spread it roughly. It does not need to be neat.
10. Repeat three more times, sheets then sauce then ricotta, finishing with ricotta on top.
11. Tear the mozzarella over and scatter on the last 20g of parmesan, plus the chilli flakes if you are using them.
12. Cover with foil, domed so it does not touch the cheese, and bake for 30 minutes.
13. Take the foil off and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is browned in patches and the sauce bubbles at the edges.
14. Rest it for 15 minutes before cutting. That wait is the difference between a square and a landslide.

Make it ahead, and what to do with the rest

Assemble the whole thing up to a day ahead, cover it and keep it in the fridge, then add 10 minutes to the covered bake because it goes in cold. Baked, cooled and cut into portions, it freezes for three months and reheats covered at 180°C in about 25 minutes. It is also better on day two, when the sheets have finished drinking and the layers hold together on the way to the plate.

You will have most of the pesto jar left. Its own label points at mashed potato and white beans, and it is very good stirred through steamed greens with a squeeze of lemon. If you want another dinner out of the same pantry, roasted aubergines and butter beans in chilli pesto is the oven-baked one and prawn linguine with Calabrian chilli pesto is the 25 minute one.

Common questions

What is Ottolenghi food?

Yotam Ottolenghi is a London chef and food writer whose cooking is vegetable-led and built on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavour: chilli, citrus, herbs, tahini, preserved lemon. The range we stock is the pantry line, jars and pastes that carry those flavours without the shopping list behind them. We taste everything we range, and this sauce is the one we reach for most on a weeknight.

Can you use jarred sauce in lasagne?

Yes, with one adjustment. Jarred sauces are reduced for the shelf, so they are thicker than a home ragu and dry pasta sheets have nothing to drink. Loosen them, roughly a 400g tin of tomatoes and 100ml of water for every 700g of sauce. Taste for salt before it goes near the dish, because the layers hide it afterwards.

How do you stop aubergine going oily?

Roast it instead of frying it. Cut it into 3cm pieces, toss with a measured two tablespoons of oil and roast on a hot tray at 220°C, so the cells collapse in dry heat rather than drinking oil in a pan. Salting for 30 minutes first works for the same reason. In this recipe the jar has already done it for you.

Two jars of roasted aubergine and tomato sauce at $14.95 each build the whole dish, and the rest of the Ottolenghi range is worth a look while the oven comes up to heat. Weekday orders placed before 12pm are dispatched the same day from our packing room in Corio, and shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100. If you are buying for someone who cooks rather than cooking yourself, the Ottolenghi hampers are the same pantry with a ribbon on it.