An Eggplant Gift from a Friend.

My sweet and lovely friend Nicole gave us some of the prettiest eggplants I had ever seen. This woman is the garden queen and I am so glad to have her help next year with out tiny school garden. :)

I promised her that I would share what I ended up doing with them. Here it is, girl!

Eggplant and Portobello Schnitzel

1. Make sure your oven is preheating at 350 degrees and you coat your baking sheet with cooking spray of your choice.

2. You will want to whisk together 1 cup of milk (soy, cow, nut) and an egg in a bowl. Spread about 2 cups of Italian flavored bread crumbs on a plate. Dip the mushrooms (you will need a portobello for each person, I didn't have them so I sliced up some buttons about 3-4 button mushrooms for each person) and your eggplant slices into your milk mixture, then coat them with breadcrumbs. Place the dipped and crumbed veggies on your baking sheet and spray the tops with more cooking spray. You will want to bake them for about 10 minutes, but you will need to watch them until they look good and brown and crispy to your liking. About 10 minutes into it you can flip them carefully and bake another 10 to 15 minutes.

3. To make your Lemon-Caper sauce you will melt 3 Tbs. of unsalted butter over medium-high heat. Cook it for almost 3 minutes until the butter begins to brown. Stir in 3 Tbs. of olive oil and 3 tsp. of capers, and cook for another minute. Remove from the heat and add 3 Tbs. lemon juice and 2 Tbs. chopped parsley.

4. To plate this up place an eggplant slice on the plate for your first layer. For the next layer you would put your portobello, but I just layered as many button slices as I felt it needed. Next stack about 3 more eggplant slices on top of that. Drizzle with your sauce and serve with anything else that strikes your fancy. :)

The mushrooms were so good!!!! If you give it a try let me know!