Thursday, January 6, 2011

eating my vegetables.

One of my goals for the new year is to find creative (yummy!) ways to cook vegetables.  I'm not sure how creative this is, but it was definitely tasty, stimulating to the eye, and fun (and easy) to make.  This will be my new go to lunch at home, but will also be great as a side dish or served with pasta.







Eggplant and Zucchini Stack

1 Japanese eggplant
1 large zucchini
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
parmesan cheese
mozzarella cheese
homemade marinara or the best jarred you can find 

Slice eggplant and zucchini, lengthwise, into three strips.  Gently toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Lay on cookie sheet and roast at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, flipping after 10.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and roast another two minutes.  Meanwhile, heat a 1/2 a cup (I didn't measure!) of marinara in microwave.  Stack slices alternating zucchini and eggplant.  Cut in half on a diagonal.  Pour hot marinara over both stacks and grate mozzarella over the top.  Sprinkle with more salt and fresh ground pepper. 

Cook's Notes:
1. I trim a bit of the skin off both the eggplant and zucchini.
2. Salt is seriously important!
3. I used that (dreaded) green can of parmesan (which Sparky loves) because I didn't have any fresh.  Next time I'll use fresh but it was actually great this way.
4. Pretty sure I grated gruyere over the top because that's what I grabbed with the two year old hanging on my legs.  But my intention was mozzarella. =)
5. My marinara of choice is Rao's which I've mentioned before.  I like it better than homemade to be quite honest!
6. Next time I will add crushed red pepper before roasting the veggies.

7 comments:

  1. This looks amazing to me! I wish RBB would eat it. Might be this for me and chicken for him one night.

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  2. OKAY this looks DELICIOUS!!! WHAT?!?! I'm going to try this. WOWWWW!!

    A.Co @ A.Co est. 1984

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  3. That does look yummy! We've been trying to buy and prepare fruits and veggies we're not very familiar with. We aim for one a week and it's been pretty fun. Some of them have even come back for repeat performances!

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  4. this looks prettty dang delicious!!

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  5. Wow- you have done your job in making these vegetables look incredibly delicious. I will try this very soon.

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  6. YUM! Totally one of my goals as well...looking forward to eating them out of my garden too ;)

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  7. This is great! More posts like this please! We are not vegetarian per say but we eat primarily vegetables during the week...just trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

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