Eggplant Marsala

Since I've been trying to cook more vegetarian meals for my wife, and since we just came from the farmer's market yesterday, I wanted to make something a little different.

Eggplant Marsala over egg noodles with marinated
cucumbers and basil and broccoli

Marsala is one of our favorites, and I've made many different versions of it. (There's a post here for a version with polenta and a creamy marsala sauce).

One of the things I saw that looked awesome at the market yesterday was eggplant.  We don't have them often and when we do it's generally either eggplant parmigiana or baba ghanoush (recipe also posted here).

I couldn't pass them up but as I mentioned, I wanted to try something different, so I decided to try eggplant marsala.  It's something that I had never even heard of before so I looked it up and found a few recipes. I didn't want mine to be a copy of someone else's so I left it at that - I didn't read any of them, so if this one is similar to one already posted it's just a case of great minds thinking alike!

Ingredients

• 1 medium/large eggplant sliced into approximately 3/4 inch rounds

  

  This is how much you will get out of
  one medium sized eggplant

• 1 cup flour
• 1 egg beaten well mixed with two tbsp milk
• 1 cup breadcrumbs (I would love to try this with panko, but I was out of it, so I used plain regular breadcrumbs and seasoned them with fresh rosemary, oregano, garlic powder and sage)
• 3-4 tbsp butter
• olive oil for browning (if you have infused olive oil, even better)
• 2 small shallots or 1/2 small onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup marsala wine
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup portobello mushrooms sliced thin (feel free to use another variety of mushroom if you prefer)

Directions

1. Sprinkle salt lightly on both sides of the eggplant and place between paper towels.  Let sit for half an hour.  This will pull the moisture out of the eggplant and help make it crispy.
2. After sitting for at least 30 minutes, rinse the eggplant off with water and pat dry. Sprinkle spices of your choice over sliced eggplant (I use garlic powder, dried ground rosemary, dried basil, oregano, seasoned salt and fresh ground pepper - very lightly).
3. Dredge seasoned slices through flour on both sides.
4. Coat with egg/milk mixture.

   

   Browning the eggplant

5. Coat thoroughly with bread crumbs and set aside.
6. Heat olive oil (I use a garlic or rosemary-infused oil) and butter over medium high heat in heavy bottomed pan.  I prefer to use something other than a non-stick pan for this.  Stainless steel works well.
7. Cook all of the eggplant in batches until it's golden brown on both sides (add additional oil/butter if necessary).
8. After the eggplant is finished, add onions and mushrooms.
9. Cook onions and mushrooms in the same pan you used for the eggplant - if necessary add additional oil/butter.
10. Add minced garlic to the onions and mushrooms for about one to two minutes (long enough to cook but not to burn).
11. When the garlic, onions and mushrooms are ready, add the wine. Scrape the bottom of the pan to get all of the "good stuff" that may be stuck there and then reduce the wine by half.
12. Add the vegetable broth and bring to a boil.
13. Continue cooking over medium heat until the sauce starts to thicken.  You may also thicken the juices with a water/cornstarch slurry if you'd like.
14. Serve over egg noodles and enjoy!!

If you try this, please let me know what you think in the comments!