Eggplant Parmesan

There is a new trend that many of you may have heard of called "Meatless Monday".    We decided as a family to try this out and eliminate meat from at least one dinner per week.  Now when I said "we decided as a family", I should clarify that Walter and I decided.  Jake is on board, but Will is now lobbying for "Tons of Meat Tuesday" to make up for Monday.

Last night we had Eggplant Parmesan courtesy of a recipe from Mario Batali via Food Network's website.   Until last night, I had never made an eggplant parmesan.  I have a very good chicken parmesan recipe, but it is anything but good for you.  What appealed to me about this recipe is there was no breading and pan frying of the eggplant.  You roast the eggplant in the oven first, and then construct your dish.  With the exception of the cheese (which can be lightened up), its a pretty healthy meal.

When making this, I cut a couple of corners.  First of all, I did not make my own tomato sauce.  I find that in the winter, when tomatoes are not that great to begin with, you might as well use a jarred sauce.  This also cuts down on time if you wanted to throw this together on a busy weekday night.  The recipe also calls for homemade breadcrumbs, which I didn't make.  I used Progresso Italian bread crumbs, which I already had in the pantry.

I have a couple of notes if you decide to make this.  I found it took longer to roast the eggplant than called for in the recipe - more like 20 minutes.  Instead of assembling the eggplant in four individual stacks, I placed the eggplant side by side, and ended up with two layers of eggplant, sauce, basil and cheeses ending with the breadcrumbs.  Since I "cheated" with the breadcrumbs, I broiled the dish at the very end  for a couple of minutes to brown my breadcrumbs.  Overall, this was a very satisfying dish.  We served the cheesy eggplant over whole wheat thin spaghetti, and had a delicious salad as a side.