I made Minimalist Baker’s Vegan Recipe once a few months ago and knew it was a keeper right away. This simple recipe is simplicity at its tastiest. I served it tonight with the leftover cornbread from breakfast this morning and a side of warmed up marinera sauce. I used Rao’s homemade Marina; its my favorite so far; perfectly balanced, clean fresh flavors of tomatoes, basil and savory onion; I only added minced garlic with extra virgin olive oil before heating it up on the pan!
Usually I follow the recipe pretty much exactly, but today I forgot to separate the flour and Panko ad just combined it. It came out well too and it’s one less plate to clean. I never usually add salt to squeeze the bitterness out because I feel it’s too much work; only ever so often, I would come across bitter eggplant; so I was never inspires to even try it out with the salt. However, I could imagine it being much crisper. The eggplant I bake usually come out crispy on the outside, but meatier or denser on the inside.
Recipe is as follows from the Minimalist Baker (I only made a few very minor adjustments):
EGGPLANT PARMESAN
Ingredients
3-4 small eggplants (I bought the pack of 4 from Costco this time)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup unsweetened ricemilk
1 tsp cornstarch
3-5 cloves minced garlic
Steps
1- Prepare your dipping stations by placing:
Station 1- Rice milk and cornstarch in one
Station 2- Flour in another bowl
Station 3- Panko bread crumbs, sea salt, oregano and nutritional yeast in another bowl
2- Once thoroughly dry, dip eggplant slices in flour, then rice milk mixture, then breadcrumbs.
3- Arrange on the baking sheet and pop in oven to bake for a total of 20-30 minutes.
4- Mince 3-5 cloves of garlic with extra virgin olive oil for a minute and add in the Marinara sauce to bring slowly to a boil and turn off.
5- Serve with corn muffin or make pasta to go with it if you prefer.
**Note: I like to cheat and use a baking rack on top of my baking dish to double the eggplant I am baking. That way, the top layer of eggplant on the rack will finish cooking; I’ll take it out to cool with that rack and continue to let the bottom layer in original baking dish cook for another 10 minutes or so. It saves so much time!
Do you have a favorite side dish you like to eat with your eggplant Parmesan?