One of my favorite things about having a mostly vegetarian diet is all the fun and unique recipes you can find to make plain, sometimes boring vegetables exciting and delicious. One of my favorite vegetables to work with has become eggplant. It’s one of those vegetables that you can do almost anything with if you get creative and not only is it low calorie, it tastes great. Some complain that eggplant is too slimly when they cook it, but I assure you that if cooked the right way, eggplant can be delicious in a number of different dishes.
So today I want to share with you one of my favorite eggplant creations. I created this when I was getting bored with just having eggplant parmesan with breaded eggplant and wanted to come up with a different variety of the dish. I had an eggplant, tomato, and cheese in my fridge and with a little help from similar recipes I came up with this great dish that can work great as a main course or as a side dish! You can even change the portion size very easily so whether you are cooking for just yourself or for the entire family, the dish is easy to put together and alter. Each stack takes two slices of eggplant and one slice tomato. So if you just want to make one stack you can, or if you want to make an entire eggplant’s worth, you can do that as well!
Ingredients
- 1 eggplant
- 1-2 large tomatoes
- Cheese of your choice (feta, goat cheese, or mozzarella work well)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- Dash of salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 350⁰ F.
- Cut eggplant in ½ centimeter slices. (each stack will need two slices of eggplant). If you would like to peel the eggplant first you can, but this dish can also be eaten with the skin.
- Cut slices of ½ centimeter slices of tomato to match the diameter size of the eggplant pieces.
- Using a skillet, grill the eggplants for about 2-3 minutes on each side.
- In a small bowl, combine olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper
- Spray a casserole dish with nonstick spray and place the first layer of eggplant down on the dish and then lightly coat it with the oil mixture.
- Lightly layer with cheese.
- Place tomato slices on eggplant bottoms of similar size.
- Lightly layer with cheese.
- Top off each stack with another piece off eggplant of a similar size.
- Coat the stacks with the oil mixture and sprinkle cheese on top of everything.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cheese turns golden and eggplant becomes soft.
This is a great dish to serve as a main dish or along side of pasta.
I hope you enjoy this dish. Feel free to add your own twist to it and let me know what you try!
Until next time,
Kat
Kat Classics 