Last night, I decided to turn up the dial in the kitchen. The other day, completely on a whim, I bought a large eggplant. Although I have never attempted to make anything with eggplant, I saw it and knew it had to be mine to play with in the kitch. And so it was.

Next step was to decide what to do with it. Enter Pampered Chef - in one of their fantastic recipe books I found a recipe for Baked Eggplant Parmesan Crisps. They feature it as more of an appetizer with Goat Cheese and Slow Roasted Tomatoes (yum, I know), but since Dan isn’t a fan of the Goat Cheese, and I wanted this to be dinner, we sliced up a ball of mozz, made a side of crushed tomato sauce and paired it with a parmesan cous cous and voila! We became fancy.

The eggplant was surprisingly easy, and it took me about 15 minutes to prepare and 25 minutes to bake. I do wish I would have thought to snap some photos of the tasty discs as they looked amazing. Quite a few of my Recipe Trials tend to be more of the “it may not look great but it tastes delicious” variety. But alas, I will grab photos next time. For now, the recipe is below, enjoy!

Baked Eggplant Parmesan Crisps:

• 1 Eggplant, peeled and then sliced (about 1/4 inch thickness)*
• Approximately 1/2 cup of flour
• Mixture of 1 1/2 cup Bread Crumbs, 1/4 cup Grated Parmesan, 1 tbsp Italian Seasoning (I used the Pampered Chef Brand, but a mixture of dried onion, basil, oregano, parsley, marjoram, garlic should do it)**
• 2 Eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 Sous Chef Dan (okay, you may not have one of those on hand, but it should still turn out adequate)

Preheat Oven to 400 degrees. Lightly coat / spray a cooking stone (I used my large bar pan) with olive oil.

*If you are like me and tend to get overly excited about working with a new product, you may have forgotten to peel the eggplant before you sliced it. In this case, you could take my approach and stack them up and slice off the edges turning the spheres into octagons, giving them unique character in an otherwise bland world. Or you could cook it with the skin which supposedly has uber amounts of fiber. The options tend to be limitless when you use your imagination and refuse to be discouraged.

**Truth? I didn’t use any measuring cups, but that is a good approximation. Maybe some more parmesan cheese…

Okay, so now that you have your shapes, dredge lightly in the flour, dip in the eggs to cover and then coat evenly with the bread crumb mixture. Place them in one layer on the stone, spray them lightly with olive oil and pop them in the oven for about 25 minutes. I have a gas oven and they came out perfectly in that time frame, but I also peered through the oven window every 5 minutes after 15 to see what they were up to in there. I treat suggested baking times like a conspiracy theorist, I don’t trust any of them.

Just when they had reached a golden brown, we turned the oven down to 250, placed a slice of mozz on top and let them continue to keep warm in the oven until the cheese was just starting to get gooey. Pair with your favorite tomato sauce, and although we chose a parmesan cous cous as our side, this could easily go over a bed of spinach or side of pasta if that’s your craving.

So go forth and embrace the eggplant with no fear.