Easy Eggplant Pizza!

It was a busy day here at Creative Sociology. There were several posts today. Plus, it was the staff Christmas party. I'm a staff of one, just me holding the operation down, so I treated myself to a burrito from my favorite food truck. It didn't disappoint.

I happily devoured a giant burrito for lunch knowing that dinner would be on the lighter side. This is a recipe courtesy of Max Lowery from his book The 2 Meal Day. I'm not on the 2 Meal Day diet plan. I bought the book for recipe ideas. It's also oddly fun to read about the idea of a 2 Meal Day approach without actually having to follow it. I digress.

This is a poor quality picture and I admit to staging the bookmark. I'm proud that I got to see a production of A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Theatre of Youth in Buffalo. It was outstanding. Support local theatre.

Anyhow, the premise of eggplant pizza is wonderfully simple. Oven at 375. Slice an eggplant and drizzle with olive oil. Season as you like. Put them in the oven for around 25 minutes. Then add sauce, more seasoning, Parmesan and mozzarella cheese and finish them in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Here's my work at various stages. You can see I added kalamata olives because they're delicious.

Honestly I was thrilled at how these came out. I've never made eggplant pizza before. They tasted better than I expected. I think my seasoning was on point (salt, pepper, garlic powder, and some Mrs. Dash stuff I keep on hand). Don't judge me for using Mrs. Dash -- inexpensive and gets the job done. As a time saver I used sauce from a jar.

This was just for wifey and me. The kids (10 and 7) aren't about to eat eggplant. So they had spaghetti with said sauce from a jar. Wifey is a good judge of my food -- if what I cook ain't good she'll say so. She and I both agreed these little pizzas were good and that'd we definitely have them again.

I highly recommend you give this a try, and just make sure to be consistent in your eggplant slices -- don't slice them too thin else they'll wither away. You also of course want them to cook through at the same time. The book recommends 3/4 inch slices and I think that's about what I achieved. Also use decent quality mozzarella instead of the shredded stuff. Since all you have to buy is one eggplant and a jar of sauce, you might as well splurge on the mozzarella. If you don't like kalamata olives try another topping. Or don't, it's your life. As you can see in the picture, I didn't use them on all the pizzas, and the plain ones were very good too.