Healthy Eggplant Parmesan

Community Supported Agriculture - Our farmers have been growing a miniature eggplant - and I'm in love with these little purple cuties!!!

Eggplant hasn't  been one of our family staples, so I wasn't really sure how to proceed... so I just decided to make a classic - well sort of! I started surfing for eggplant parmesan recipes. All the classics call for the eggplant to be sliced, coated in egg and breadcrumbs and fried in oil. Ughhh! I couldn't do that to my little purple babies and I really didn't want to do that to my waistline either. So, I improvised.

Healthy Eggplant Parmesan

3 tomatoes*

1 sweet red pepper*

1 red hot pepper*

3 cloves garlic**

12 baby eggplant*

fresh sliced mozzerella (look for the package that says "16 slices")

olive oil

salt

pepper

1/2 c. grated parmigiano reggiano (or other similar cheese)

fresh pasta of your choice

* = from Fruitful Hills our CSA farmers

** = from Bad Seed Urban Farmer's Market http://www.badseedkc.com/

Roughly dice the tomatoes, sweet pepper, and hot pepper. Peel garlic and roughly chop. Add all to a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pulse until finely chopped, then leave running and stream in olive oil until it looks like tomato sauce. Pour into a 9X13 baking pan.

Slice the baby eggplant in half lengthwise. Layer on top of sauce.

Layer with the sliced, fresh mozzarella. It was a little pricey ($7.99 at Price Chopper), but the time saving convenience of having it pre-sliced combined with the healthy benefit of fresh mozzarella makes it worth it.

Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. (Boil water and cook pasta while this bakes.) Sprinkle with parmigiano reggiano and continue baking for 5 more minutes. Serve over hot pasta. This makes a very light, taste packed, sauce. It will not look like a traditional plate of spaghetti and sauce!