Eggplant Parmesan

This time I tried something that I thought I would be able to pull off! I LOVE Italian food.  I would eat pasta, pizza, antipasto everyday if possible.  I had a rather large eggplant sitting in the fridge and I didn't know what to do with it. I started looking up recipes for eggplants online and stumbled across a recipe for Eggplant Parmesan, so I thought, why not!?! I really roughly based my recipe off of this one by Martha Stewart: Martha Stewart's Baked Parmesan .  I will warn you all now, I did NOT measure any of the ingredients, so I will just be putting estimations here.  I just sort of threw them into the bowls.

Ingredients and Materials:

-  cookie sheet
-  cooking rack
-  knife
-  paper towel
-  3 containers
-  1 eggplant
-  salt
-  bread crumbs
-  Parmesan cheese (already grated, or powdered)
-  garlic powder
-  dried parsley
-  2 eggs
-  flour
-  tomato sauce
-  Mozzarella cheese
-  fresh basil
-  cooking spray
-  time

Directions;

1.  Slice your eggplant into 1/4 inch rounds.  Place your cooling rack on your cookie sheet.  Salt both sides of all of your eggplant rounds and put them on the cooling rack.  Let them sit for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.  This will pull a lot of the moisture out of the eggplant.

2.  After some time, take the eggplant off of the rack and give them a quick rinse to get the salt off.  Then pat them dry and leave on a paper towel.  Give your cooling rack and cookie sheet a quick wash and dry.

3.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. This is the point where I just sort of disregarded most of the recipe.  I set up 3 containers.  The first with about 1/4 cups of flour, 2 eggs (beaten) in the second, and the breading in the third.  For the breading, I used approximately 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, 1/4 cup of Parmesan, 1/4 tsp of garlic powder and dried parsley.

4.  At this point, I just followed a basic breading process.  Take a round of eggplant, dip it in the flour, on both sides.  Then cover the round in egg.  Finally, coat it in the breading and set aside.  Do this for all of your eggplant rounds.

5.  Give your cooling rack a quick spray with the cooking spray and spread out your breaded rounds.  Bake for 20 minutes, flip them and bake for another 20 minutes

6. At this point, I put all of the rounds on the cookie sheet.  Each round then got a tablespoon of tomato sauce, a slice of mozzarella, and a fresh basil leaf.  I let this bake for another 15 minutes, to warm the sauce and melt the cheese.

7.  I let them cool for a little bit, then served them with some noodles in a rose sauce with mushrooms and zucchini on top.

The verdict?  This was delicious.  I will make this many more times in the foreseeable future.  This cat was very, very much alive.