The other night I looking in my fridge, wondering what I should make for dinner when I noticed that I had an eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes to use up. Hence this easy eggplant parmesan. It came together (with baking time) in under an hour, and was an absolutely delicious, light, and healthy meal! NOTE: I had tomatoes to use up, so I made a tomato sauce myself, but you could absolutely use premade sauce from the store, just make sure to use a high quality product with great flavor. Because summer is coming to an end, I also chose to grill the eggplant to give it a bit of extra flavor, but you could totally just roast them in the oven or cook them on a grill pan if you don’t have an actual grill.
Ingredients:
- 8 plum size tomatoes, diced
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 shallot
- ½ tsp salt
- 1/2tsp rosemary
- ½ cup dry white wine such as sauvignon blanc
- 3 tbs tomato paste
- 1 large eggplant, cut into ¼ – ½ inch slices
- 1 zucchini sliced paper thin
- 1 ¼ cup cooked, shredded chicken (I used leftovers)
- 1 cup ricotta cheese
- ¾ cup mozzarella cheese
- 4 tbs olive oil + extra for drizzling
Start out by chopping garlic and shallot, and sautéing it with 2 tbs olive oil and rosemary. Cook until translucent, about 3 minutes, then add tomato paste and continue to cook for another 3 minutes. Next add in diced tomatoes, wine, and salt. Simmer on low for 10-15 minutes while you finish the rest of this easy eggplant parmesan.
Slice your eggplant ¼ – ½ inch thick and lay it out on a paper towel to get rid of some excess moisture. After you finish cutting it and all slices have been placed on paper towel, drizzle with remaining 2 tbs of oil and place on grill for about 5 minutes per side. You want nice grill marks on them. The eggplant shouldn’t take any longer than this to cook because it is cut thin.
Once it is done, take it off the grill, sprinkle with salt, then set it aside to use. Next, spray a pie pan with olive oil and start layering! Start with a few tbs of the tomato sauce, just to cover the bottom, then put a layer of eggplant, then more tomato sauce, then the cooked chicken, ricotta, a little more tomato sauce, the rest of the eggplant, a little more tomato sauce, then the mozzarella. The key with this layering is to only use a few tbs of the tomato sauce at a time, so you get a little bit of it in almost every layer, giving it flavor without making it too sauce in just one layer.
Next, slice the zucchini paper thin on a mandolin (click for link). I got my mandolin thinking that I wouldn’t use it too much, and I use it all the time! It literally takes seconds to slice vegetables, and cuts prep time down drastically. Arrange the zucchini slices in a circular pattern on top of the mozzarella, then drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook at 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes until tomato sauce is bubbly, and zucchini is cooked.
This may sound like a lot of steps, but I promise you, it comes together super quickly! So here you have it: easy eggplant parmesan! Try it out and let me know what you think!