I kind of have a thing for eggplant. This is especially true of eggplant parm, which is one of the first dishes I made for vegetarians, and was the dish that got me into cooking vegetarian food. For the past four years it has been a signature dish of mine. This time around I was getting a little bored with it So this is a little twist on the classic eggplant parm.

Ingredients:

For the eggplant:

Three eggplants halved and sliced about 1/4″ thick

3 cups bread crumbs

6 eggs

3 cups olive oil

salt

For the sauce:

14 red bell peppers

12 cloves of garlic, peeled

2 Tbs crushed red pepper (more or less depending on desired spiciness. This is fairly mild)

6 cups light cream

3 cups parmesan cheese

Also:

3/4 lb mozzarella cheese, grated

2 lb fettuccine or similar cooked

For Garlic Bread

2 loaved Italian bread

1.5 sticks of butter, at room temperature

8 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 Tbs olive oil

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Serves 10

Generously salt the eggplant, then let it sit for 1 hour. Rinse off remaining salt and brown liquid and allow to dry. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan. I recommend doing this in two batches if you are making the full quantity. Fill a bowl with bread crumbs and beaten egg. I suggest using half a cup of bread crumbs and 1 egg at a time. Dip eggplant into the egg, then the bread crumbs, then fry until golden brown. Expect this to take hours for this quantity.

Pre-heat your oven to 500F. Place red peppers on metal cookie dishes and cook for 30 minutes, turning the peppers every 10. For the final 10 minutes add your garlic. The skins of your peppers should be black and peeling.

Put the peppers in a bowl or pot and cover for at least 30 minutes. Then drain, and remove skin and seeds. Run through the food processor.

Heat this mixture in a large saucepan for about a minute, then add cream, cheese, and crushed red pepper and cook until warm all the way through.

Layer your eggplant and sauce in a glass baking pan. I chose to skip the cheese layer, figuring there was more than enough dairy in the sauce already. Top with your mozzerella.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

For the garlic bread: Put butter, garlic and oil in the food processor and blend. I didn’t wash the food processor after the red peppers, figuring the flavor addition would be nice. Cut your bread in half lengthwise and spread your butter mixture evenly across all of your bread. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Broil your garlic bread until it turns golden. The broil function on my oven is awful so I use my toaster oven.

Pull your eggplant out of the oven:

Serve with pasta and more sauce.