We love eggplant so much and all year we look forward to eggplants being in season. In celebration, this is the first of many eggplant centered posts!
Makes: 2 1/2 sheet pan’s worth of cutlets
Time: 2 hrs
Ingredients:
3 medium eggplants, cut into 1/4” coins
kosher salt
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt
4 pieces of toast or two cups of bread crumbs (a gluten free bread or crumb will work here)
1/2 cup oats gluten-free option
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 tbsp garlic powder
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 tbsp salt, if your sunflower seeds are salted, you will need less salt.
3/4 tsp pepper, divided
3 or 4 eggs
olive oil
Cut the eggplants into round slices between 1/4 and 1/2 inch in thickness. We leave the skins on, but if you want less fiber, skin the eggplant before cutting. Layer them in a colander salting each layer generously. Leave eggplant to drain about 20 minutes. This will pull the moisture from the eggplant allowing it to cook faster and get sweeter. During this time, prepare the bread crumb mixture and pre-heat the oven to 375 F.
Rip your toast into chunks before putting it into the food processor with the oats. Blend them until they are sandy with slightly larger chunks. Add the sunflower seeds, garlic powder, nutritional yeast, salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper. Blend until the majority of the sunflower seeds have been cut at least once, but not so far that the mixture looks homogeneous. Leave some sunflower seed chunks. Once the eggplant has been salted for 20 minutes it should have released some moisture that you will be able to see on the surface. Press the eggplant between kitchen towels to remove the moisture and some of the salt. Assemble a workstation with a shallow bowl of beaten eggs, a shallow bowl of cornstarch mixed with 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, and a shallow bowl of the breadcrumb mixture. Dip the eggplant in the cornstarch, then the egg, and then breadcrumbs. Start with two eggs and add more as necessary to coat all the eggplant.
Lay the coated eggplant out on baking sheets. Using a pastry brush, dab oil onto both sides of each eggplant. If you don’t have a pastry brush you can use a spoon to gently put a bit of oil onto the eggplant at a time. Bake in the oven for 1 hr flipping every 20 minutes.
The photo we’re sharing today is these babies served with pasta, tomato sauce, and Kite Hill Almond Ricotta. It was fantastically delicious, but far from the only way we like to eat them! We like to make a big batch of these on the weekend and eat them during the week when it is hard to fit in cooking with work. We love them on a bagel as a sandwich, or just eating them as a snack. We have also cut them up and thrown them on top of a salad.