Baked Eggplant Sandwiches

Last week, my friend came home and brought an eggplant. It is a really nice, beautiful, big, firm, purple eggplant. Well, to be honest, I'm not really a big fan of eggplant. My mother used to make a fried eggplant when I was a child. But she was using different type of eggplants. The skin was not as tough as eggplants that I find in Netherlands. I don't know. It was just different.

Hmm... what should I do? what kind of dish that i could make out of it?Just make a stir fry eggplant with sesame oil or olive oil? No. I want something else. The eggplant was sitting quietly in my refrigerator for few days. Until I remember one of recipe that I found on youtube few months ago. Chef John's baked eggplant sandwiches. I'm a fan of his dishes and I wanted to remake this eggplant dish for weeks but I never got a chance. I almost forget about it. Until now :)

So, I made it few days ago. Baked eggplant sandwiches. Sliced eggplant filled with cheese and salami, covered with breadcrumbs, and baked for about 20 minutes.

15 minutes after I pulled them out of the oven, I tried one bite. It was delicious. The eggplant was soft and chewy. But at the same time, the breadcrumbs made it crunchy. The salami and melting cheese are great. I never thought that eggplant goes well with salami. Thank you chef John. You're awesome. I serve it on the plate with some green salad. Sweet chili sauce or honey mustard sauce will be great as the condiment.

Ingredients :

• 1 Eggplant
• 14 Small sliced cheese
• 7 Thinly sliced salami
• 2 Eggs, beaten
• 100 grams flour
• 200 grams bread crumbs
• Olive oil
• Some grated cheese

Tip :  The amount of the sliced cheese and sliced salami are depend on the amount of eggplant sandwiches. It is depend on the eggplant that you have. The longer eggplant that you have, the more pair of eggplant spices that you'll get. From my eggplant, I could get 7 eggplant sandwiches and 1 small slice of eggplant. 

Preparation :

1. Preheat oven for 210 C (about 425 F).
2. Prepare a baking sheet, line it with aluminium foil, and drizzle some olive oil on the top. Set aside.
3. Cut the eggplant into about 1 cm thick slices. Make a pair one to another out of it.
4. Put 1 sliced of cheese, 1 slice of salami, and another slice of cheese between on each pair of eggplant.
   
5. Coat the eggplant sandwich with the flour.
6. Dip the coated eggplant sandwich into beaten egg.
7. Coat it again with the breadcrumbs. Make sure all the surfaces are coated well with the breadcrumbs.
8. Put the eggplants sandwiches on the prepared baking sheet.
9. On the top of each of them, drizzle some olive oil and add some grated cheese.
10. Put the baking sheet into preheated oven and bake them for about 10 minutes.
11. Take the baking sheet out and flip all the sandwiches.
12. Add some more olive oil and grated cheese on the top of them.
13. Put them back into the oven and bake for another 10 minutes.
14. Take them out from the oven and let them cool for a while.
    
15. Ready to serve.

Tip : For meatless version, you can just skip the salami. :)