Potato and Parmesan Crusted Eggplant

This one is not my recipe, though I did set quantities to it and made a few tweaks to suit my purposes. I saw it on livejournal many years ago, and thought it sounded exciting. It was exciting! It’s still exciting! I recommended to the author of the recipe (as you can see in the link) that she submit it to a potato flake contest. No idea if she did, but I hope so. The world needs this recipe. That, alongside the fact we just learned about eggplant, is why I’m sharing it with y’all. Some recipes really are too special to hoard like a dragon.

This dish is good enough that I normally eat it as a meal rather than a side, that Ross and I sometimes bicker over who gets the last piece, and that we’re both eternally grateful that Child Tester is anti-eggplant. It’s a real boon to not have to share this with even more people when I make it! I eat eggplant as often as possible, but this is hands down my favorite use for this beautiful berry. The eggplant basically melts in there, so you wind up with this incredibly rich, fatty, crunchy crust that’s immediately followed by pillows of soft, sweet, and creamy yum.

This also scales really nicely so you can make enough for a larger crowd. Make way more than you think you need to if you’re doing this. You will be the hit of that potluck!

Whether or not this is a healthful recipe is up to you. I personally consider butter to be healthful ambrosia, but y’all may not be such rabid fans of buttery goodness! Either way, it really is a lot of butter, so reduce it if that suits your purposes. I believe in the original recipe she used 4-6 tablespoons instead of a full stick.

Here’s what you’ll need

1 globe eggplant

2 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 stick butter

1/2 cup flour

1 cup each: dried potato flakes (instant mashed potatoes), grated parmesan cheese (green can is fine)

Here’s what you’ll do

Preheat oven to 400F. While oven is heating, put the butter in a 9x13” (or thereabouts) sized baking dish and melt the butter in the oven while it’s heating.

Peel the eggplant and slice it into 1/2-1” rounds. I prefer 1” for its more balanced post-baking crust to eggplant textural ratio. Half-inch rounds, however, are still ridiculously delicious and take less time to bake and can go about 10 minutes total instead of 10 per side. You do what you want.

Mix together the flour and some salt and pepper in a bowl or on a plate. Sometimes I use a seasoned salt or Cajun blend instead. You have tons of flexibility here, and I could see this being amazing with curry powder (I received a bottle of this as a gift once and it’s wonderful), za’atar, ras al hanout (if you make this recipe, I personally would toss in a bit of rose petal if it’s an option), or other fun spice blends. Now that all these flavors are mixing in my mind, I’ll be trying more of these options out, too!

Whisk together egg, salt and pepper in a bowl.

Combine potato flakes and cheese (I add pepper here too) in another bowl/plate.

PRO TIP: put your flour mixture in a brown paper lunch bag, then drop the rounds into it, close, and shake well. Ditto the potato and cheese mixture in a separate bag. It’s a lot less messy to do it this way and you normally get better coverage.

Dip eggplant into the flour mixture, then egg, then coat in the potato/cheese mixture. Place rounds in preheated pan. Bake 10 minutes, flip the eggplants, and bake another 10. Serves 1-2 as a meal, and in theory you could use this for 4 people as a side. Good luck and let me know if that pans without more than one eggplant being involved. Enquiring minds want to know!