Food Creations: Fried eggplant with a roasted red pepper and mushroom sauce.

This is one of my all time favorite meals! It is meatless, but it fills me up every time. The eggplant is fried so that is not the most healthy thing in the world, but it is better than a lot of things! The taste is so worth it as a treat meal sometimes, plus a good eggplant only comes around every once in awhile where I live so - I make the best of it, it's a little like a celebration to me. I had some more asparagus with this meal because I got a lot in my Bountiful Basket this last time. If you want to see how I made it you can look at the "This isn't exactly what you would call meatloaf post."

The sauce is a much brighter red in real life, but you know I did take the pictures on my phone.

You will need:

For the Sauce:

Butter

Olive Oil

Cooking Wine

Garlic

Onions

Herbs

Mushrooms

A jar of red peppers (they are normally pretty expensive, but my husband found these at the dollar tree and got a bunch for me)

Pepper

Parmesan or Asiago Cheese

For the Eggplant:

Eggplant

Whole wheat bread

Almonds (optional)

Herbs

Salt and Pepper

Flour

Eggs

Noodles

Your favorite brand of Whole Grain noodles - I used Barrilla Whole Grain thin spaghetti.

Salt

Olive Oil

water - duh.

Cut the ends off the eggplant.

Slice the eggplant into really thin slices. If they are too thick they will be gummy, and bland and not crispy and yummy.

Add about 5-6 slices of bread, salt and pepper, herbs, and almonds to the food processor.

Blend until they are bread crumby, it will be a little wet because it's not dried like bread crumbs.

Crack 5-7 eggs and add some milk in a shallow pan or dish.

In a shallow dishes assemble a breading line. In the first one put flour, in the second your milk and eggs all mixed up, and finally the bread crumb mixture.

First coat the eggplant in flour and shake off the excess.

Coat in egg.

And finally in the breadcrumbs.

Cover both sides and set aside.

I like to put them on a cookie sheet and set them aside for when it's time to fry them. It makes it go by really fast.
It's time to start the sauce.

Smash up 4-5 cloves of garlic to make it easier to get the paper off.

Slice up garlic, onion, and mushrooms.

Soften the onions and garlic, add about 1/4 cup wine.

Add the mushroom and red peppers and wait for them to soften a little bit, add some chicken broth and allow it to soften a little more until all the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and peppers are all softened

Add cheese, pepper, and herbs to a food processor.

Blend all together until smooth.

Place back in a pan to keep warm on low heat, add more chicken broth to sauce to get the desired thickness. The sauce is seriously so much better looking in real life... A whole lot more red. Plus it smells amazing.

Heat oil in a frying pan, either on the stove or just one of these bad boys. Test the heat by adding some of the bread crumbs in to see if the oil bubbles when you add it.