Eggplant Caprese Stack

I really enjoy making food I know in different ways, I figured I want Italian, but I don't want Pasta and I want something fast using veggies that need to be used...and voila fresh mozzarella was on sale at the store...it was meant to be!

Eggplant Caprese Stack

what you need:

eggplant

fresh mozzarella

tomatoes

zucchini or any other veg. you want 

fresh basil

S&P and red pepper flakes

Garlic

EVOO

Step 0: Slice the eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and cheese into thin slices. Turn Broiler on and get the pan inside piping hot.

Step 1: pour some olive oil onto the bottom of a baking dish, put eggplant and zucchini slices in there and coat with EVOO (I use a silicone brush to help with this, hands work well too)

Step 2: Place eggplant-zucchini on the really hot pre-heated broiler pan till they are kinda brown on both sides (this can be done on any type of grill, this is just my most convenient method).

Step 3: while these guys above are tanning, get out a pan and put about 2 T. of EVOO in there with some chopped garlic and red pepper flakes, turn the flame to med-low and let the garlic simmer, not brown. The point of this is to get the garlic into the oil.

Step 4: Once the veg. is done create a nice ingredient stacking station, place it close to your garlic oil and begin stacking!

stacking station. note the beautiful heirloom tomatoes...

lay eggplant onto already oiled dish, paint some of the garlic oil on top, add tomato then s&p and basil.

then add zucchini, more oil

then mozzarella and more basil

keep stacking till you can no longer stack, but do make sure that  you end with cheese on top. Put the rest of the garlic and oil on the top of the top and put in the oven, Oh yeah turn the Oven to 375˚ and bake till the cheese is brown.

Step 5: EaT! (added baguette with left over garlic oil spread on top)