No picture for this one, sorry. It was so delicious that I ate the whole damn thing without even thinking of taking a picture, no worries though, it was good enough that I'll make it again and try to take a picture this time. This really ended up being nothing like eggplant parmesan, I'm only calling it that because that's what I based it on.
Eggplant Parmesan-ish
Ingredients:
-1 Medium to large sized purple eggplant
-Breadcrumbs
-Olive oil
-Fresh Spinach
-1 bottle of tomato pasta sauce (this can be tricky to find a good pasta sauce that is actually all food and not preservatives and stuff, I've yet to find one that I'm happy with, and I'm open to suggestions!)
-Shredded cheese (use whatever kind you want, this particular one I made was a blend of Gruyere and Emmentaler swiss cheese)
-Whole grain pasta
Directions:
Turn on the broiler.
Slice the eggplant into about 1/2 inch thick slices and lay them out on a baking sheet, spray (if you own an olive oil sprayer) or brush both sides of the eggplant rounds with olive oil. Sprinkle both sides of the rounds with breadcrumbs. You'll have to press them onto the rounds since there's not egg/milk mixture to hold them on as is normal.
Put the eggplant rounds into the broiler for about 5-8 minutes, until the bread crumbs get a nice golden brown.
Remove the rounds from the broiler and turn the set the oven for 350.
Make one layer of eggplant in the bottom of a 9x9 baking pan, cover the eggplant with some of the shredded cheese, then layer spinach over that and pour some pasta sauce over the whole thing.
Repeat the layering process until you run out of eggplant (should be about 3 layers, depending on the size of the eggplant you started with).
Top with a little more cheese and then put it in the oven for about 20 minutes or so (until the eggplant is tender when poked with a fork).
While the eggplant is baking cook the pasta (Spaghetti works well, but pretty much any noodle will work). No, I'm not explaining how to make the pasta.
Serve the eggplant over pasta. It's delicious!
(If you don't cook with eggplant often, they will get really bitter if you keep them in the fridge for too long, and then no amount of tomato sauce and cheese will help it)
that sounds yummy! I love eggplant unconditionally.
ReplyDeleteI buy pre made preservative laden sauce all the time, and it's just not as good. The port marinara i made was awesome and only needed to simmer for 20 minutes, so i might just keep tomato paste and lots of canned tomatoes on hand for when i need sauce.