Paleo mixed veggie lasagna

Eatdrinkpaleo.com.au is a great site living down here in Australia because it is an Australian site which means that the things she uses should be easy to find in the stores here. This recipe doesn't really have anything unusual in it and it certainly is delicious. We put some cheese on the top so it's not really Paleo but you can easily leave that out. The red wine in the meat sauce really makes it extra yummy.

Ingredients
serves 4
500 g grass-fed beef mince
1 onion, peeled and chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
160 ml dry red wine
720 ml tomato passata (it’s basically a fresh tomato puree, comes in large jars or you can puree your own from scratch; diced canned tomatoes are fine, just process them into smoother consistency first)
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter or coconut oil
2/3 tsp sweet paprika
2/3 tsp black pepper
1 +2/3 tsp sea salt
1 large parsnip, peeled and sliced into thin disks
1 large eggplant, peeled and sliced into disks (a little thicker than the parsnips, about 1/2 cm)
3 medium zucchinis, sliced vertically into thin ribbons
4 mushrooms, sliced
A handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
2-3 handfuls of baby spinach leaves
Butter and olive oil for cooking
Optional topping –  100 ml grated cheese

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Peel and chop onion and garlic. Slice the eggplant and sprinkle with salt to let some of the moisture out, set aside in a bowl.
Heat a frying pan with 1 teaspoon of butter to high. Break beef mince into small pieces and fry on high heat until the colour changes from red to lightly brown. Break the meat apart as it tends to clump together during cooking. Stir frequently to make sure all mince pieces are fried evenly. This should take about 5-7 minutes.
Add red wine, chopped garlic, pepper, paprika and salt to cooking meat and fry for a further 3-4 minutes. Add tomato passata, bring to boil and turn the heat down to simmering temperature.
Heat another frying pan with 3 tablespoons of olive oil to medium. Sauté chopped onion with a pinch of salt for 5 minutes. Add onion and the olive oil to cooked in to the mince sauce, stir through and simmer for a further 10 minutes.
While the sauce is cooking, peel and slice parsnip into thin disks. Drizzle the bottom of a large, deep baking tray with some olive oil. Place a layer of parsnip slices overlapping each other. Put in the oven to start cooking while we prepare the rest of ingredients.
Pre-slice mushrooms and zucchini.
For the eggplant layer, we need to slightly pre-cook the aubergine slices. Heat a large frying pan to medium high. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 teaspoon of butter. Add the first batch of eggplant slices making sure they don’t overlap. Fry on each side for 1-2 minutes, just to cook them slightly. Repeat oil, ghee and eggplant until all disks are pre-cooked.
By this stage, all of our ingredients should be ready. Take the baking tray out of the oven and start layering the lasagna in the following order: pre-cooked parsnips, ½ of tomato meat sauce, eggplant, basil, mushrooms, the rest of the meat sauce pressed down evenly, baby spinach, zucchini, drizzle of olive oil and some cracked black pepper. Cook in the oven at 180-190C for 35-40 minutes.
If adding grated cheese, take lasagna out at a 20 minute mark and add the cheese on top. Put back in the oven and turn it up to 200 degrees Celsius for a further 10-15 minutes.