Eggplant Parmesan

Hi everyone,

The blog is officially back in action so get ready.  If you bake breaded eggplant, it doesn't even taste like eggplant and gets all crispy and delicious I swear.  So try it even if you don't like eggplant.

Ingredients:
3 eggplants - peel and thinly slice
4 cups Panko or Italian bread crumbs
6 cups spaghetti sauce
16 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Dip eggplant slices in egg, then in bread crumbs. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes on each side.
3. In a 9x13 inch baking dish spread spaghetti sauce to cover the bottom. Place a layer of eggplant slices in the sauce. Sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Repeat with remaining ingredients, ending with the cheeses.
4. Bake for 35 minutes, or until golden brown.

Breaded Eggplant

Speaking of customizing, this one was pretty far out there even for me!  It is based on this amazing eggplant dish I used to eat at least once a week at a Tapas restaurant in Accra - yeah you heard me right, a Spanish restaurant run by an Indian in Ghana - and it was delicious.  It was lightly breaded and fried eggplant that they drizzled with honey and topped with feta cheese.

So I had an eggplant and decided it was time to try it out again.  I set up a little assembly line of egg (2 eggs with some salt and pepper in there) and about 1 cup of panko bread crumbs.  I sliced the eggplant into thin slices and then dipped each slice into the egg and coated it in breadcrumbs.  The eggplant was pretty big so I went through half of it and ran out of space on my cookie sheet and ran out of egg and panko so I left the rest for another day.

Obviously I baked it instead of frying it because I had to healthify it and am not very good at frying things.  So I put them all on a baking sheet and drizzled a little bit of olive oil onto each one.  I baked it at 375 for what ended up being about 30 minutes altogether and flipped it halfway through.  They ended up being super crunchy and delicious, which I was pretty excited about because there's nothing worse than mushy (or uncooked) eggplant and I had no idea what I was doing!

Once they were done, I took them out and put some crumbled feta (ok fine I used goat cheese but I know not everyone is a fan, but they both work well) on top and then drizzled honey over the whole thing.

In the spirit of sharing vegetable recipes, I thought I'd share this one - it will seriously surprise you - I'm going to have to start making it for people so that you'll actually give it a chance but I swear it was amazing!

Next up is eggplant parmesan because I have to do round 2 with the rest of the eggplant tomorrow.