Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Clean Eating #75: Eggplant Parmesan

Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients:
1 Eggplant, sliced and soaked in salt water
2-3 eggs, blended
Fresh Parmesan cheese (for grating on the top)
coconut oil for 'frying'

Breading:
1/2 cup Nabisco Shredded Wheat Cereal
1/2 cup flaxseed
1/2 cup oat bran
1/2 to 1cup of parmesan cheese
(Grind ingredients together in your blender or food processor)

Soak the eggplant in a bowl of water with some salt (I just salted the pieces until I was fairly sure it all had some salt) 
Soak for about 30 minutes.
Drain in a strainer while you make the breading.
Dry the eggplant thoroughly with a towel/paper towels (we don't buy paper towels, so I have one bath towel for the kitchen)

As with the fish sticks and chicken fingers, dip the dried slices in the mixed eggs, then in the plate of breading until they're covered.
Heat a skillet on the stove to medium-high heat and coat with coconut oil.
Cook your slices ~ depending on the thickness, this really only takes a few minutes.  Flip them, and when they're crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, you're good to go.

Put some of your already heated hearty sauce on a plate and top with a cooked eggplant.
Top with some shredded parmesan and stick the plate** under the broiler for a few minutes.
Viola!


**If you are accident prone or have children, you will want to toast the eggplant under the broiler and THEN transfer it to the plates of sauce.  Since it was just me and my hubby, we did it the other way instead... and I didn't even burn myself!

Verdict:  Its a hit!  We're going to have some more tonight.  I only cooked a few slices yesterday since it was just us, but I've got the girls back tonight, so we're going to try it out again.  A GREAT vegetarian dish.