Love, Love, Love the thought of Meatless Mondays. I’m a huge fan of anything vegetable and it’s just nice to see that you don’t always need meat at every meal. It helps me really put my brain to work and see how many meat dishes I can convert into meatless dishes and/or simply come up with.
To some the word meatless or vegetable is such a turn off, but really to me it makes me happy and also gives me the opportunity to start my week off clean and more healthy. I don’t believe in ‘as long as it’s vegetable it’s healthy’. For me you can’t steam broccoli and then add 1/2 a pound of butter, or flour, or all those heavy sauces and consider it healthy; at that point just eat a burger and your probably more healthy and it’s less caloric.

To me meatless resonates with clean, lean, purifying, nutritious and most of all beneficial. So, I think of dishes that I can put together that are all the above mentioned. It’s not that I am eating meatless because meat is bad and so on, so on. But because I truly enjoy vegetables and healthy grains and actually making things that derive soley from the earth. Or atleast most of it.

The Recipe that follows is so simple and really delicious. I love eggplant, it’s a great substitute for meat because it’s a really filling vegetable. I love eggplant Parmiggiana I have a lo-cal recipe here. This time I kept the eggplant whole and stuffed it with mushrooms…Delicious. I hope that you like it and remember that you can always make your on twist, add another vegetable, or you can stuff it with Quinoa, Cous-cous, Rice, even Meat.
This is my meatless delicious version. Enjoy.

Ingredients:

2 medium Eggplants

1/2 lb. Sliced mushrooms

1 small can diced Tomatoes

1 clove Garlic, chopped finely

3 tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Chili Flakes (optional)

Parchment Paper

Preheat your oven at 180° C (350°F).
Slice your eggplant in half and with a spoon scoop out the center leaving about 1-2 in. around the border. Put the eggplant aside and begin to slice into small cubes what you scooped out of the eggplant.

In a large saucepan heat 2 tbsp. of olive oil and add your finely chopped garlic clove, once golden color add your mushrooms and chopped eggplant. Allow to cook for 5-8 minutes until you see the eggplant and mushrooms start to shrink a little, now add your can of diced tomatoes, salt and pepper and chili flakes and allow to simmer for another 8 minutes.

In the meantime, drizzle remainder of olive oil inside the whole eggplants and sprinkle some salt as well. By now you can turn off your eggplant and mushroom sauce and scoop the mixture inside of the eggplants. Face both halves together to look like a whole eggplant and wrap in parchment paper, put in a baking tray, do the same with the other eggplant and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Be careful when you unwrap the eggplant as steam might escape. There might be sauce at the bottom of the parchment so grab the whole thing put on plates and push the eggplant off the parchment and eat. YUM.

*Optional you could grate Parmigiano and put over the top if you wish….My husband did.