Eggplant Mozzarella

I have now cooked 100 recipes from The New Moosewood Cookbook!!! It’s kind of hard to believe that I’ve made it this far, and I am so proud of myself for sticking with the project for this long. I initially thought I would be at the 100-recipe mark several months sooner, but this is not the time to dwell on “should of”s. The important part is that I’m here now!

Fancy...

            To celebrate my accomplishment, I decided to make eggplant mozzarella, which is what you get when you forget to buy Parmesan cheese at the grocery store. Turns out it’s just as good. I also whipped up some spaghetti to eat alongside the eggplant. 

Basically, eggplant parm (mozz) is lasagna but instead of layering noodles you layer giant pieces of eggplant. Technically Moosewood’s recipe called for using one of their recipes for the marinara sauce, but I was too lazy and just bought a jar of Classico at Kroger. But I did splurge and get the fancy “Italian Style” breadcrumbs, whatever that means.

            The dish was absolutely wonderful! Since eggplant is basically flavorless, the dish really just tasted like cheesy pasta sauce, which I am totally fine with. And it’s quite filling because of the eggplant. My only wish was that I had some crusty garlic bread to mop up the excess sauce. I might have to make a grocery store run before eating the leftovers as my lunch this week!

            A couple days ago, I decided to repurpose the blueberry pie fiasco I made for Memorial Day. I made it into blueberry crisp using Moosewood’s topping recipe from its apple crisp recipe. It is perfect this way; much better than the pie. With vanilla bean ice cream on the top, it’s pretty much the quintessential summer dessert.

            I have one more week of summer classes remaining and then about 2 weeks back with my family. I have already sketched out a plan that involves me cooking a LOT because I really really want to finish this project. And after those two weeks at home, I’ll be spending the next 7 weeks without a kitchen! So the cooking will be on a major hiatus and I’ll be setting myself back quite a bit. The pressure of the deadline is really there!

           

 If you want to read a bit more about my last 100 recipes, be sure to check out my new “Greatest Hits” tab on the top of the blog. I’ve included my 10 favorite recipes there along with links to the posts. Thanks for the encouragement! 141 recipes to go!