Cynfully Good Stuffed, Baked Eggplant

If you have an abundance of eggplant in your garden, you might be running out ways to cook them. How many trays of eggplant parmiagana can you possibly make?

Here is a delicious recipe for baked, stuffed eggplant from OrganicSoul.com.  I adapted it slightly to make it vegetarian/vegan.  In my version, the eggplant pulp is chopped and cooked together with a vegetarian meat alternative (instead of ground beef) and fresh vegetables and herbs. Then the mixture is stuffed back into the eggplant 'boats' and then baked.

This feeds four people and is a really impressive dish for guests. It's incredibly filling so you don't need many side dishes to go with it. Serve with a tossed green salad and warm, crusty wholegrain bread. Perfect...........

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggplants
• 1 cup onion, chopped
• 1 cup mushrooms, chopped
• 1 cup spinach, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 Tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
• 1 Tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped
• 2 Tablespoons parsley, chopped
• salt/ pepper
• 1 package MorningStar Crumbles or Gimme Lean (vegetarian ground beef alternative)
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil plus extra for drizzling
• ¼ cup tomato paste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cut eggplant in half lengthwise. Remove pulp leaving ½ inch of the outer shell.  Dice the pulp.
3. Heat the oil in a large pan and then sauté the onions, garlic and meat alternative until almost done, add the mushrooms, diced eggplant pulp, spinach, fresh herbs, salt and pepper and continue to sauté an additional 2 minutes.  Stir in tomato paste and remove from stove.
4. Brush the inside of the eggplant shell with olive oil
5. Spoon mixture into eggplant shell and drizzle olive oil on top.  Cover and bake for 45 minutes.
6. Serve warm

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