I do hope you all enjoyed the recipe from my weekend contributor, Zanne! She is fantastic and has so many ideas for her future posts. I can't wait!!!
Well, now on to my Eggplant and Avocado Caprese Stack. Before I get around to sharing the recipe, let me first explain how it came to be.
Last week I was in my local grocery store. I saw these beautiful organic eggplants and just had to buy one. I didn't know what I was going to do with my new beautiful eggplant, so I started thinking. I racked my brain trying to remember Pinterest recipes that I had recently Pinned. Low and behold, I remembered one! It was an Eggplant Caprese Stack. I thought it sounded delicious so I grabbed an organic tomato then I walked over to the dairy section and grabbed some fresh mozzarella. I had no idea if I needed anything else, so I left with just that.
Once I was home I started really thinking about the recipe. I decided to look it up on my Pinterest board. The 'breading' was nothing more than flax seed and raw almonds ground up together in a very fine sand consistency. Thanks God I just bought a Vitamix! And thank God I keep a well stocked pantry, I had flax and raw almonds already;)
I also had an avocado that was about to go bad. I decided avocado would be a nice addition to the stack. let me tell you, this meal was AMAZING!!!
Now on to the recipe!
What You Need:
- 1 organic eggplant
- 1 large tomato
- 1 ball of fresh mozzarella
- 1 organic avocado
- Basil (I used dry basil, but you can use fresh)
- Balsamic Vinegar
- 1 cup raw almonds
- 1/4 cup ground flax seed
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 T water
- olive oil
How It's Made:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Peel and slice eggplant into thin slices (about 1/4 inch thick)
- Mix together egg and water into shallow bowl
- Add flax and almonds to a food processor or blender and blend until sand like consistency
- Put nut/flax mixture into a separate shallow bowl
- Grease two cookie sheets with olive oil
- Dip each eggplant slice into egg mixture and then into nut mixture. Be sure to coat both sides.
- Place eggplant side by side on baking sheet
- Drizzle more olive oil on top of eggplant slices
- Bake about 8 minutes, then remove from oven and flip eggplant slices over. Return to oven for another 8 minutes or until eggplants are tender all the way through.
- Once removed from oven, place eggplant slices on a paper towel to drain oil
- Cut tomato into hearty slices (salt and pepper the tomato slices for more flavor)
- Cut avocado in to thin slices (how you would slice an apple, but thinner)
- Cut mozzarella into thin or thick slices (whatever you prefer)
- Your last step is to stack each item. Do it however you want, but I did mine like this"
- Eggplant on the bottom
- Then a tomato slice
- Another eggplant slice
- Then three slices of avocado
- Another eggplant slice
- Then topped with mozzarella, sprinkled with basil and drizzled with balsamic
There you have it. I did have left over eggplant (all the pieces I didn't cut straight or were too small). I decided that I would make a super simple eggplant parm with my left over eggplant and mozz.
I got a small baking dish. Place eggplant on the bottom, spooned organic marinara over the top and added some cheese. I repeated the layers one more time, sprinkled with a little basil and Viola! Kid friendly, easy-peasy eggplant parm!
There you have it. two eggplant recipes that are easy to make, gluten-free, organic, and just about every other dietary term you can think of (not dairy or nut free though!). I hope you try it and enjoy it!
Happy Eats,
Christin
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