First let me say that since discovering cashew parmesan my life as changed forever. It’s probably not amazingly similar to dairy cheese, but it does have a really (not-gross) cheesy flavour! It’s so delicious as it’s own cool thing anyway. I LOVE IT. And it literally takes 5 minutes to make.

I keep a jar in my fridge to sprinkle on pizza or pasta, or on anything savoury! I discovered cashew parmesan on Minamilist Baker’s blog.

Anyway, my mum made this the other night for a good ol’ family dinner, and it was so good I thought I’d share it with the world! The recipe is adapted from a ripped out page of a magazine I don’t know the name of. But the ingredients are really simple and yum! You can either make your own sauce like in the recipe, or just use a store bought tomato sauce, then you can get around to eating it a lot faster 😉

Ingredients:
5 eggplants, sliced lengthways 6mm thick
Spelt flour (or a gluten free flour) for dusting
Olive oil to pan fry
About 1 cup cashew parmesan (you can get the recipe here)
2 cups basil leaves (save the stalks to use in the sauce)

Sauce:
¼ cup olive oil
1 onion, diced
6 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
600g fresh tomatoes
400g can of tomatoes
2 tablespoons chopped oregano

Place eggplant in a large bowl. Add 2 teaspoons salt, toss to coast and set aside to drain (about 20 minutes).

To make the sauce, heat the oil in a fry pan over a high heat, add the onion and stir until its starts to soften and caramalise, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and stir for about a minute.
Add the fresh and canned tomatoes, oregano and basil stalks.
Bring to a simmer then reduce heat to medium and stir occasionally until the tomatoes are soft (about 30 minutes).
Remove the basil stalks and transfer to a blender and blend until smooth.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
For the eggplant, lightly dust the slices in flour and pan fry in batches for 2-4 minutes until golden.

To assemble:
Preheat oven to 180C.
Spoon some sauce into a baking dish (15x25cm).
Top with a layer of eggplant, sprinkle with cashew parmesan and chopped basil, then repeat until all the ingredients are used.
Top with a layer of sauce and extra cashew cheese.
Bake until golden and bubbling, about 30 minutes.
Sprinkle with extra basil to serve.

We had this with green salad and baked potatoes! ♡ ☯ ☆