Recipe: Eggplant and Quinoa Parmesan

If you're like me, you've probably had (and loved) any kinda of chicken parmesan. If you're also like me, you have probably never, or seldom, had eggplant parmesan. Well, yesterday I was able to score a nice pile of fresh picked farm eggplants for about $4.00 - a total steal - and knew I wanted to make eggplant parm.

The next question was, how did I want to do it? I wanted something different and healthy. Pasta just wasn't going to cut it this time. So I turned to my tried and true favorite - quinoa. I have never had quinoa with marinara sauce before, but after tonight it's safe to say I will be eating it this way a lot more often.

Eggplant - Quinoa Parmesan

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa, cooked with garlic and basil (for cooking directions, this is my tried and true favorite tutorial).

2 small (or 1 large) eggplant, sliced and dried. (once again, see this tutorial on how to dry your eggplant)

1 - 1.5 cups of breadcrumbs (I actually made my own!)

1 large egg

1/2 - 1 cup milk 

1/2 standard jar of your favorite marinara sauce

1 package of shredded mozzarella cheese

Desired seasonings - basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, garlic, etc

To cook eggplant:

1)Preheat oven to 425

2) Mix your egg and milk together in a small bowl. Have another bowl prepared with the breadcrumbs

3) Get a cookie sheet and spray/rub with olive oil

4) Dip your eggplant slices in the egg/milk then breadcrumbs then place on pan.

5)Once all eggplant is dipped, place in oven and bake 10-15 min (until crispy)

6) Take out of oven, do your best to turn over the slices and bake for another 5 min.

To prepare the dish:

1) Prepare your qunioa and eggplant. To save time, you can actually do these at the same time.

2) Once eggplant and qunioa are ready, begin preparing the casserole. Lower oven temp to 375. 

3) In a rectangular pan, spray with oil and then add a thin layer of marinara. Season the marinara if desired. 

4) Now layer in your quinoa. Don't expect it to layer perfectly - odds are the quinoa and sauce will end up mixing together. That's ok :) 

5) Place cooked eggplant on top, in a single layer if possible. 

6) Pour more sauce on top, as much as desired. 

7) Cover the pan and cook for 10-15 min, or until hot all the way through.

8) Remove from oven and sprinkle with cheese and more seasonings. Place back in oven and cook uncovered for 5 more minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

9) Remove from oven, let stand for a bit and then serve. It's best with steamed veggies, like broccoli or asparagus.  

Normally I'd give the nutritional info, but this one is a bit harder with all it's components. Just take my word that it tasted amazing!

I think the thing I like the most about this dish is that, although I used a few tutorials to make the components, I came up with the idea from complete scratch. And it turned out so amazing. I definitely am glad I took the time to dry out my eggplant, that helped it so much.  I bet this would be amazing with parmesan cheese added also, or layered like lasagna, or if the eggplant was mixed with the quinoa. Man, the possibilities are endless here!

What a fun experiment. I can't wait to do more. 

~Lisa 

Recipe: Baked Chicken with Herbed Mushroom Gravy (and gnocchi!)

I come bearing yet another recipe from my "More with Less Cookbook" that I tried this past week. I was flipping through pages and stumbled upon this one. I think what drew me in was that my mom makes a very similar dish at home, using cream of mushroom soup. The idea of making my own "gravy" was really intriguing and I knew I had to try it. 

The nice thing about this book is how simple the recipes really are and how well they explain everything. I am hoping to do a review here in a few weeks with more information. The muffins in the last post also came from this book, fyi.

Baked Chicken with Herbed Mushroom Gravy
(Shown served with gnocchi and green beans)

Ingredients:

Sauce:

4 Tbsp Margarine

1/4 c chopped mushrooms

1 Tbsp chopped onion - I used dried onion flakes

4 Tbsp Flour (you can alter the thickness by adding more or less flour and margarine)

1/4 tsp salt

1 c milk

Chicken:

1 lb chicken (I used boneless breasts, but you may use what you prefer)

1 1/4 c of the sauce (1 batch basically)

1 tsp lemon zest

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp basil

1/4 tsp oregano

Any other seasonings you prefer - I added thyme

Recipe:

To make the sauce:

In a saucepan, add the margarine, mushrooms and onion. Saute until mushroom are fairly cooked.

Add in the flour and salt and stir and cook until bubbly.

Add milk with a whisk and cook just until it's thickened and smooth.

To make chicken:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Place cleaned chicken in a glass pan (I used a 9x9 square).

Combine the mushroom sauce with the rest of your ingredients and poor over the chicken.

Bake uncovered for an hour and 15 minutes. 

Serve with desired sides. It tastes really good with cooked gnocchi!

Nutrition Info:

(serving size - 1/4 lb chicken, 4 serving per recipe)

313 calories

11 gram fat

3 gram sat fat

11 gram carbs

4 gram sugar

37 gram protein

This was a super delicious dish, and the addition of the herbs and lemon to the sauce made it so amazing - I never would have thought to have done this. If you are too scared to try making the sauce from scratch (But come on! It wasn't that hard) you can buy a can of cream of mushroom soup instead.  I am sure it will taste good regardless.

Have a great weekend all.

~Lisa

Recipe: Pineapple-Coconut (whole wheat) Muffins

Tonight's recipe is one that I tried about a year ago and never got around to making again. I popped open my cookbook tonight and decided to give it another go.

Pineapple-Coconut Muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup white flour

1 cup wheat flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 honey (or sugar...if you must)

1/4 softened margarine

1 large egg

1 cup crushed pineapple with juice

1/4-1/3 cup shredded coconut

coconut sugar (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

In a bowl sift/stir together the flours, baking powder and salt. Set aside

Mix the honey and margarine in a separate bowl and once mixed add the egg.

Beat well and then stir in the pineapple and coconut.

Mix the wet ingredients with the dry and stir just until the flour is moist.

Fill your muffin tins 2/3 of the way full and sprinkle with coconut sugar.

 Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from tin as soon as they are ready. 

Best served warm. :) 

Nutrition Facts:

Serving size - 1 muffin

114 calories

1 g fat

4738 mg sodium

24 g carbs

8 g sugar (but remember, it's from the honey and pineapple)

3 g protein

The coconut was something I added to the recipe, and I replaced the sugar with honey. I think I could have baked mine a bit longer (I just did 15 min) but we will see when they cool. Overall, these turned out much better than the last time.  I bet there are lots of other things you could add to amp up the flavor!

~Lisa