This is my own creation and it turned out well, no recipe, no nothing just what came up outta my head so I am going to share and puff myself up a bit because oh my Jesus this was good!!!

As you may know I am married to a non-vegan culinary degree’d chef. This sounded really sweet when he was making most of the meals but when I got laid off as an Implementation Project Manager over voice/data/API software, took Hippocrates Health Institute training, went vegan and became the primary chef (air quotes are necessary here) things can be really challenging.

This dish is a bit of a riff off the vegan moussaka recipe I posted a few years back. There are a few steps but nothing hard.

First I set aside a nice pan I wanted to layer the goods into and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or so.

But before we get to baking, I sliced a large organic eggplant into 1/4 inch rounds. Here you could do the Vegan Bob’s RedMill Egg Replacer and it works very well! I got lazy and skipped that. Don’t skip this step because your panko will stick so much better to the eggplant.

Get a bowl and put about a cup or so of Jeff Nathan Gluten Free Panko, delicious, and add salt and pepper, mix it up. You would not be lazy and dip the eggplant slices into the egg mixture and then dip into the panko. If all you have is panko and no egg replacer no worries, mine did turn out well but as I stated, much of the panko came off in the saute pan and …you know the rest. Don’t be lazy. Do as I say not as I did.

You can saute in organic Olive oil and rest on paper towels to soak up the extra oil. And while the eggplant slices are resting, get your sauce together. Get a saucepan out and add 2 cans of organic stewed tomatoes and paste. This can be warmed.

Get a saute pan out, add your organic oil, sunflower, olive, avocado but say hell no to Canola…it is in everything, Whole Foods switched up to using it in all their prepared stuff that I can no longer eat, thanks oh so much for being cheap. Get a real quality oil.

Slice up half an onion or so, a few bits of fresh garlic, (is there ever too much garlic? ) add some Italian seasoning and stir. Next, add mushrooms. I like weird mushrooms. So I used oyster but you could go with Criminy or a mix of shrooms. I am making an Asian soup later so I just used some Oyster, half a box, feeling I would save the rest for the soup later. Saute this all together until aromatic and ready and then add this concoction into your tomato sauce.

Spices…you could also add smoked paprika. I could huff smoked paprika. Delicious.

Layer your eggplant slices in the bottom of the pan. Top with slices of Miyokos Vegan Smoked Mozzarella. You could perhaps use half a container of the cheese here. Then if you wanted to do another layer and more eggplant for a larger dish, feel free. I just topped my one layer and cheese with the tomato sauce. Then I topped all that with a layer of panko on the top. Into the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.

The smokiness of the cheese added so much complexity to this dish. I hope that you enjoy it too! ♥ Please comment and share if you enjoyed!