Sunday, June 19, 2011

Baked Eggplant and Tomato Pastry

This is a dish that we had while on our cruise and we found it absolutely delicious! It seemed like a fairly simple and yet elegant dish packed with loads of flavor. Very simply, it is a piece of puff pastry dough topped with marinara sauce, breaded eggplant and tomato slices, and fresh mozzarella.
The dish was the drizzled with a balsamic vinegar and basil reduction, but I don't think that I'm up for trying something that difficult at the moment.
Ingredients
  • 1-2 eggplant, cut into 1/2" slices lengthwise
  • 1-2 cups Italian style bread crumbs
  • 2-3 eggs
  • 2-4 tablespoons milk
  • 1-2 tomatoes
  • 2 sheets of Puff Pastry, thawed (Alton Brown says to just go ahead and buy it from the store as homemade is a long and difficult process. I would agree. Pillsbury has a nice dough and you can even get coupons once in a while)
  • 1 log of fresh mozzarella cheese
  • 1 cup marinara sauce (1-2 tablespoons per pastry piece)
  • fresh basil leaves for garnish
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Using a sharp pizza cutter cut out rectangles of pastry (3"x4"). Place pastries on a chilled sheet pan and let cool in the refrigerator for a few minutes. In the meantime, bread your eggplant (dip first in egg/milk mixture, then in crumbs).
  3. Remove pastry rectangles from the fridge and top in this order: 1-2 tablespoons marinara, 1 slice eggplant, 1-2 slices tomato (depending on how big your tomato was), and 2 slices mozzarella.
  4. Place pans in the preheated oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. 
This recipe is a work in progress until after I've made it so feel free to attempt it and comment with any changes you'd make.

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