Friday 8 March 2013

Black Pepper Breaded Aubergine Slices


It's true I love breadcrumbs. Anything from a pasta bake to Mac and Cheeze, I savour the golden, crispy bread crumbed morsels, and will always make an excuse to add extra to a recipe if they are required! There are alot of bread crumby fake meat slices out there and although I love them they aren't especially good for you being usually high in salt and processed. So I thought I would get my fix and bread crumb some aubergine slices, and they turned out great! Once again use a good non-stick frying pan or you could bake these in the oven making sure to turn them frequently to get a nice golden crust.
There a lot of people who 'salt' their aubergines to remove bitterness and their water content, but I tend to be in the non-salting prep camp. I have never had a bitter aubergine and I enjoy the moist middle of these slices, so see no point in wasting salt and having to wait an hour to do this mythical aubergine salting. You can do it if you like but they will work beautifully without this preparation.

Ingredients:
Dry Mix:
2 Cups of Fine Bread Crumbs ( 4 or so slices of bread whizzed up in a food processor)
1/4 Tsp of Black Pepper
1/2 Tsp of Mixed Herbs
Pinch of Salt

Wet Mix:
4 Tbsp of finely milled Linseed or Flaxseed
1/4 of a Cup of Hot Water
2 Tbsp of Nutritional Yeast

1 Aubergine cut into Slices (about 1.5cm thick)
Olive oil for frying

Heat a non-stick pan and turn your oven on to 190c. Put the bread crumbs, black pepper and mixed herbs on a plate add a pinch of salt, and mix with a fork. In a bowl add the flax and hot water and mix to form a thick gluey gel! Add the nutritional yeast and pour the mixture onto another plate. Then dip your aubergine slices (both sides) in the flax gel and then into the bread crumb mix. Gently pressing on the bread crumbs to help them stick and then place in the hot pan with a little olive oil. Fry gently until golden and then flip over to fry the other side. This should be a couple of minutes each side. Depending on the size of your pan you should be able to get at least a couple of slices in the pan frying at a time. Once golden on both sides, pop into an oven dish and place in the oven to continue cooking while you finishing frying the rest. Remember to add drizzles of olive oil to the pan each time you start frying a new batch so that the bread crumbs don't burn. Once they are all golden, plate up with a lovely salad with new potatoes and avocado! Yum!

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