Baked "Fried" Eggplant

If you struggle to eat all of your veggie servings, like I do, this recipe is a great way to get in more vegetables. It's also a fun recipe for kids to help out with. (I get the marinara on the stove and then start this recipe.) This will take more time than most of the recipes I've posted on the site and will consume more of your daily allotments as well so it's not great for every day but a fun indulgence.


Ingredients:
cooking spray
1 medium eggplant, peeled and sliced into 1/4"-1/2" rounds
Flour for dredging eggplant
1 egg
6 oz. nonfat plain yogurt
1 c. Italian panko bread crumbs
Homemade marinara sauce


Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325F and coat baking sheet with cooking spray (or use Silpat.)
(Ideally, eggplant should be lightly salted, left to drain for 1/2 hr and then rinsed but, to keep this recipe low in sodium, skip this step.)
Pour flour into large zip-loc baggie.
Mix egg and yogurt together in one bowl and place bread crumbs in another.
Place several pieces of eggplant in baggie. Close bag and shake to coat.
Place flour-coated eggplant in egg/yogurt mixture. Completely coat with egg mixture. Then coat in bread crumbs.
Place on baking sheet in single layer. Spray top with cooking spray. (You can skip this step is you are using Silpat.)
Bake for 25 min. then flip eggplant and bake for an additional 20 min.
Serve with marinara as a dipping sauce

TIP: use one hand for dry ingredients and one hand for wet ingredients when dredging eggplant in order to avoid "gluey" fingers.

Results! breakdown: (for 6 slices of eggplant)
2 vegetables (3 with marinara)
1 dairy
1 starch
partial protein