First off, please excuse my blogging hiatus – my parents have been visiting for the past three weeks, and I handed over my kitchen to my mom immediately.  But tonight, I was a good daughter and decided to make dinner for my mom for a change.

I’ve been meaning to try out Chez Bettay’s Vegan Crispy Baked Eggplant for a while now and finally ended up making a variation on Eggplant Parmesan using her recipe as a base.  Dinner wasn’t vegan tonight because I did use mozzarella cheese, but the eggplant came out so perfectly – very crispy and super light – not your typical Eggplant Parm recipe.  I’m looking forward to recreating this recipe when we have eggplants from our garden this summer.  I’m also really excited to have found a fantastic vegan option for breading other vegetables (did someone say zucchini sticks or jalapeño poppers?).

Ingredients

• 2 medium to large eggplants
• 1 cup (or more) whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup (or more) bread crumbs (I was out, so toasted 5 slices of bread and ran them through my spice grinder)
• 1/3 tsp white pepper
• 1/3 tsp dry mustard
• 1 cup almond milk
• salt to taste
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• your favourite tomato sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Slice the eggplant into 3/4″ rounds (you could slice them in the other direction as well, but that’s not what I did)
3. In a wide shallow bowl (I used a pasta bowl), mix the almond milk with the white pepper, dry mustard and salt.
4. In two more wide, shallow bowls, add the whole wheat pastry flour and bread crumbs.
5. Run a slice of eggplant through the flour on both sides and then dip it into the almond milk mixture. Then dip the slice of eggplant into the bread crumbs until it is well coated. Place on a non-stick pan (I used a pizza pan).
6. Once all the eggplant is prepped, bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
7. Top the slices of eggplant with some mozzarella (or you could use parmesan or nothing at all to make it vegan) and run under the broiler briefly.
8. Top with piping hot tomato sauce when serving and serve with your favourite pasta (we chose a creamy alfredo sauce pasta with broccoli rabe).