There are certain recipes that fall into a category I call “Louisiana Church Potluck Dishes.” These are dishes that I grew up eating regularly because they were staples at the monthly “Family Night Suppers” at the church of my youth. I remember sampling delicacies like baked cushaw, mirliton supreme, and eggplant casserole without knowing what the heck they were, but hey, they tasted pretty good. My mother had her own signature dishes, and I don’t recall her ever making any of these potluck standbys, but there wasn’t really any need–we’d have them again at the next church supper.
I’d completely forgotten about eggplant casserole until a neighbor remarked that it was her favorite eggplant dish. As soon as she mentioned it, I was flooded with memories of a creamy filling covered with cracker crumbs, but I pushed it to the back of my mind because I wasn’t sure what went into it, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t vegan.
After consulting my stack of tattered, decidedly non-vegan Louisiana cookbooks, I was ready to take a stab at a vegan eggplant casserole, with one important change: Instead of boiling the eggplant, as most of the recipes instructed, I would roast it as I do for baba ganoush. It takes a little longer my way, but roasting the eggplant gives it a smokier flavor (and besides, boiling an eggplant just seems so wrong). To make this more of a main dish, I added chickpeas, but you could leave them out and serve the casserole as a terrific side dish for your creole black-eyed peas and greens on New Year’s Day. It won’t win any beauty contests, but you’ll be amazed at how luscious, creamy, and richly seasoned it is. (Even E The Eggplant Hater enjoyed it!)
Creamy Creole Eggplant Casserole
(printer-friendly version)
2 medium eggplants (about 1.25 pounds each)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 ounces mushrooms, sliced (about 2 cups sliced)
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (or canned, drained and rinsed)
2 tablespoons minced parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 teaspoon paprika (smoked or regular)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
6 ounces silken tofu (1/2 package Mori-Nu, Lite preferred)
1 ounce raw cashews (a little less than 1/4 cup)
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 slice whole wheat bread, toasted and made into bread crumbs (or use pre-seasoned breadcrumbs and omit basil and oregano, below)
1/8 teaspoon dried basil
1/8 teaspoon dried oregano
Preheat oven to 425 F. Prick eggplants several times each with a fork and place them on a baking sheet. Bake until they are both completely soft (skin will be blackened in places and collapsed in the middle)–30 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Scoop the flesh from the skin, discarding any liquid. (You can do this step a day ahead and refrigerate the eggplant pulp until ready to use.) Set aside until ready to use.
Chop all vegetables (I do each one separately in the food processor). Spray a non-stick pot with olive oil (optional, depending on the non-stickiness of your pan) and place over medium-high heat. Add the onions, green pepper, and celery and cook, stirring, until the vegetables soften, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and mushrooms and continue to cook on medium-low heat, stirring and scraping the pan’s bottom, until the mushrooms soften, about 5 minutes.
Add the reserved eggplant, chickpeas, parsley, thyme, cayenne, paprika, and black pepper. Cook, breaking up any large pieces of the eggplant with the edge of a spoon, on medium heat while you prepare the tofu mixture.
Place the tofu, cashews, onion powder, and water in a blender and process at high speed until cashews are blended and mixture is smooth. You may have to stop the machine and scrape down the sides several times and, if you’re using a Vita-Mix, use the pusher to push the mixture into the blades. Scrape the mixture out of the blender and into the pot with the eggplant-chickpea mixture. Stir well, add nutritional yeast, and salt to taste.
Preheat oven to 375F. Oil a shallow baking dish and pour the eggplant mixture into it, smoothing the top. Mix the breadcrumbs with the basil and oregano and sprinkle them over the top of the casserole. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until top is browned and casserole is hot. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before serving.
Servings: 6
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 188 calories, 32 calories from fat, 3.8g total fat, 0mg cholesterol, 1023.4mg sodium, 727.4mg potassium, 31.8g carbohydrates, 9.8g fiber, 6.4g sugar, 10.4g protein, 3.3 points.
Though MyPoints are calculated using a formula similar to Weight Watchers Points TM, this site has no affiliation with Weight Watchers and does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.
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{ 56 comments… read them below or add one }
When you are done blending the eggplant/tofu mixture, do you mix it up with the veggies you have been sauteeing, or do you layer it?
It sounds yummy!
After you blend the tofu & cashews, you mix it into the eggplant–no layering.
Hope you give it a try. It really is delicious!
Great recipe! I love eggplant and am always trying to find ways to make it appealing to my children. I love the church potluck anecdote. You had to have gone to several, like me, to really appreciate what you were talking about. Jello molds, potato salads, ah, good times… Except yours with a Louisiana flourish!
Eggplant and chickpeas are a magical combination, and I love them both! Thanks for this recipe, I'll keep it in mind for my next potluck.
What a great recipe for using eggplant. We have a friend who's wife is from Louisiana and in the past she's made some casseroles that used alot of cheese.
I grew up eating "Louisiana church potluck dishes" too. My mom's favorite was tuna casserole. One day I'll take stab at veganizing that one. Meanwhile, I think I'll just enjoy eggplant casserole.
I've been looking for an eggplant dish to have with my favorite vegan dirty rice – this looks perfect!
When you say 2 medium size eggplants, approximately how much weight are you talking about. I have one (somewhat) large one and am wondering if that will suffice.
Just made the dish. Tasted wonderful- thanks! However the instructions were a bit confusioning. Didn't get the 'reseverd eggplant' part. When is it mean to be added? Only on the tofu top or with the mann???
Anonymous, both of my eggplants together weighed 2 pounds, 10 ounces or 1200 grams. I'm pretty sure that no one large eggplant can weigh that much, but if yours does, go for it!
Mitzi, I'm glad it tasted good but sorry the instructions were confusing. I'm not sure how to be more clear: the eggplant is added to the pan with the vegetables (onion, etc.). Later, the tofu and cashews are blended and they too are added to the eggplant, chickpeas, onions, etc. There's really only two layers: seasoned breadcrumbs on the top and everything else on the bottom. I'll review the wording of the recipe to see if I can spot the problem.
I made this tonight and it was AWESOME! The directions were fine and made perfect sense to me. However, my eggplant was VERY seedy on the inside when i went to scoop it, i tried to pull out a lot of the seeds, what did you do about the seeds? in the future I will probably use smaller or japanese eggplants to avoid the seeds.
Another fatfreevegan success! I also made (for the hundreth time) your carrot spice muffins, yum.
Anonymous–I've updated the recipe with the eggplant weight and the approximate roasting time. About the food processor, I have a feeling that it will never get the cashews as perfectly smooth as the blender will, but you can always try. You can also use cashew butter instead of raw cashews to make it easier.
Meridith–Thanks for the feedback. Honestly, I just left the seeds, but your suggestion to use smaller eggplants is a good one. Glad to hear you liked it!
As always, Susan, a delicious and inspiring recipe. Yum!
Hi,
I just wanted to say I love your recipes (Especially your Banana coffee cake and lower fat banana peanut butter). I like that they're all very health conscious recipes and that you even include the nutritionals (its so hard to find online recipes that do). I was just wondering if you had any tasty recipe for low fat/fat free butter tarts?
Thanks. (And keep up the delicious recipes!!
I am going to tell my mother about this! She loves making casseroles and I know she haven't tried this one! Thanks a bunch for sharing!
Oh, Susan!!
THAT looks devine!!
This may be our New Year's Eve meal!! LOVE the addition of cashews. THANK YOU!!
Kristine Elliott
Check out this informative and inspiring video on why people choose vegan: http://veganvideo.org/
Also see Gary Yourofsky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bagt5L9wXGo
Ah! yummy looking casserole Susan.. you are right – *boiling eggplant* seems so not-correct way to do..roasting give it a nice charred-taste. I will surely give this a try. A quick question though – Can this be made a day-ahead & refrigerate for next day lunch? I am asking this as I wish to make this for one of my office potlucks.
Thanks and wishing you a very happy new year.
Siri
Hi Siri–This is a perfect make-ahead dish. If you can, warm it up in an oven or toaster oven to prevent the bread crumbs from getting soggy.
Happy new year to you, too!
Another fabulous eggplant dish; I can always count on you for a great recipe to use up the purple stuff!
Eggplants rule! This looks like a really delicious and satisfying entree. Me want some!!
I'm of the opinion that aubergine is one of the most under-rated vegetables in the West, and that seems totally criminal! I could eat it everyday and die a happy bunny. This looks awesome. Will def give it a go soon, cheers!
I love this recipe! this is so much better compared to the full fat potato pie.. I would definitely love to try this out! thanks for sharing!!
Have a happy new year!
What a great use for aubergines! I made this yesterday and really enjoyed it. The creamy texture is great and I love that this dish contains chickpeas and mushrooms as well. Those are two of my favourite ingredients.
I used a red bell pepper because there was no note about using a green one in the ingredient list, maybe you want to add that. I also added some more ground pepper, more nutritional yeast, a chili and some lemon zest and juice to the mixture to adjust it to my taste. I am glad we have lots of leftovers and am looking forward to lunch today. Thanks for sharing the recipe, Susan and happy new year!
Thanks so much Susan! It looks wonderful and can't wait to try it. I'm fairly new to your blog but have run out of ink printing recipes. All have been fantastic!
A terrific recipe! I'll definitely give it a try as soon as eggplants are in season again (next Summer). And yes, I do agree… Boiling them is so wrong!
Hi Susan,
This is inspired, and looks absolutely delicious! I can't wait to give it a try. I'll probably toast a brown rice tortilla in the oven, then process in the food processor for gluten free and relatively low fat "bread crumbs"–Happy New Year!
xo
moonwatcher
This sounds delicious! I have one question, because I hope to make this tonight and have no cashews: what function do the cashews serve/what can I substitute? Are they there for texture or taste, is what I'm getting at, I guess?
Regardless this looks fantastic.
Rachel, the cashews are purely for flavor, so you can leave them out without any problem with the texture. If you have it, you could substitute a teaspoon or two of tahini to replace a little of the flavor, though don't use too much because tahini is a stronger taste than cashews. Hope you enjoy it!
This is just such a wonderful recipe! I recently started following your blog but each and every recipe that I saw so far was just wonderfully delicious and so healthy too! Your blog is definitely an inspiration for me to remind myself every now and then that delicious does not need to be unhealthy
wowza! When I was young, we only made our eggplant casserole very simply, with eggplant, trinity, spices, and shrimp. (Plus bread crumb + spice + butter/lard covering for the final bit.) Now as a vegetarian (love my cafe au lait too much to give up the dairy, even though I'm now in land of soy), I make it with pressed tofu rather than shrimp, and rice bran oil + quick oats rather than bread crumbs + lard — fun times!
Hey Susan! I am a dedicated reader but Ive just never posted before. I just wanted to say that i look forward to all your wonderful creations! This recipe looks fabulous! Thanks for all the amazing work in 2009. Cant wait to see what 2010 brings! Best wishes to you!
I've been looking all over for this!
Thanks.
Hi Susan,
I tried this recipes yesterday and oh my, it's delicious! I usually don't like eggplant at all but now I can't wait to get some more to make this again.
The one thing I especially liked was the great combination of spices and herbs (I finally got to use smoked paprika for the first time ). You're a genius in the kitchen!
Sünne
I made this yesterday for dinner and loved it, and almost even more so the leftovers for lunch. A great way o use up the half boxes of silken tofu I often have sitting around. One thing though, your aubergines must be huge because I got 2 medium ones and even together they only weighed 1.5lbs!! I roasted a courgette and sort of mashed it in to compensate and it still worked great. Thanks for this lovely dish.
This came out really well, and I've added it to my list of "in-law friendly" dishes. My husband loved it and it was easy to throw in other veggies that I had hanging around. I used cashew butter instead of raw cashews, it's a good option for people with crappy blenders. Thank you!
This sounds so delicious! I can't wait to make it!
Susan, I love eggplant, especially the small Japanese ones, so will try this tomorrow. This may seem a silly question, but I don't usually use onion powder and am wondering, if an onion is used, why onion powder is used as well. I may have to go out and get some.
I wanted to try this recipe because I think eggplants are so pretty but I hadn't found a good use for them yet. The few eggplant recipes that I've tried so far have been awful. Thanks to you I now have a great use for eggplants. Even hubby liked this casserole (he's not much of a casserole person). I used my food processor for the tofu/cashew mixture because my lame blender can't handle nuts. It worked fine. The cashews weren't totally ground up but it added a nice texture to the dish. The next time I make it, I plan on leaving out the cayenne. The freshly ground black pepper was plenty. Thanks again. Tresa in TX.
I made this recipe and it turned out great. Of course I love mushrooms and eggplant. I am intolerant to soy (tofu) so I substituted cooked cauliflower. I think it worked great! I might try this sub in other tofu recipes.
This is on the menu for tomorrow night! Any suggestions for substituting out the Soy? We're new at this and want to avoid the soy completely/as-much-as-possible.
Thanks!
DnJ, cooked white beans (like Great Northern) can be substituted for tofu in this recipe. Hope you enjoy it!
Fantastic Dish! Highly recommended.
We omitted the tofu and replaced it with half white beans plus half a head of cauliflower (roasted golden a la America's test kitchen before pureed). Beautiful, and we went back to the recipe several times looking for all the FAT that must be there, but it just wasn't there.
another home run Susan!
WOW. You've really inspired me to try Eggplant in some new ways. I am so very fond of it, and I cook it all the time! Thanks for giving me some inspiration!
Eggplant/aubergine has always been on my 'hit list': yucky, and not worth the effort. Thanks to Susan I recently made one of her dishes involving egglant & another vegetable I avoid, just to show I have l'esprit de corps'. The dish wasn't bad at all, so, amazingly enough, I have decided to try to make this casserole, as eggplant/ aubergine is no longer rock bottom on my Yumm scale.Typical England though: I can't find silken tofu at my upscale supermarket, so I am going to invent using normal (and unfrozen) tofu.
I feel bad cause everyone loved this, but I tried it out and my husband and I thought it was just 'ok'. My 2 year old hated it and said yuck after trying it. I like the idea of the dish so much and may try to go back and tweak it for our taste.
I just discovered your blog =) I'm just starting to (officially) go vegetarian, and if all goes well I'll probably extend that to eating vegan. We'll see. In the meantime, I love eggplant, and cannot wait to try this dish!
Susan, I have recently discovered your recipes. Due to heart problems my husband and I are changing our way of eating. Must admit vegan had never appealed to us too much! However, we are enjoying your recipes so much! We have tried your sweet potato gumbo recipe and your standby lasagna which I prefer to any I've ever eaten and am now going to try the eggplant casserole. Thank you! You are a tremendous help to me.
Hi. I am from Australia and have recently found your site and have so far tried a couple of recipes.. Unfortunately my partner and I found this one less than expected. It looked great and tasted nice but not as flavoursome as indicated by most of the comments. I did reduce the cayenne and used dried sage and rosemary instead of thyme. Any suggestions where I could have gone wrong.
Just a tip – I increased the amount of spices the second time I made it (not quite doubled but more like one and a half times the original amounts) and found that the taste is bolder.
Glad 2 c ur blog! My mouth is watering at the image of your creamy eggplant casserole. I think that you're versatility is greatly demonstrated through your creative touch. I have recently hit a wall for creative vegan cooking and I get bored sometimes with what I make. Your blog looks beautiful and I can't believe that these are fat-free dishes. We are new to the vegan blogosphere. Do you have any tips for us? http://veggie-baby.blogspot.com/
I'm just cracking up at your "Louisiana Church Potluck Dishes" category…so Louisiana indeed! Glad to have found your blog and will be trying the Creamy Creole Eggplant Casserole recipe this weekend.
Do you have a good recipe for mirliton stuffing/casserole? I'd love to try it!
OMG you can eat southern and vegan. Thanks so much.
I finally made this and it was so good! Looking back at the comments now though I think next time I will certainly be using the tahini instead of the cashews (maybe with a little lemon?) I have another recipe for an eggplant/chickpea dish that has tahini and lemon that is fantastic so I think that combination with the casserole aspect will be out of this world. Thanks for the delicious recipe!
Made this tonight, exactly how the recipe was written. Out of this world delicious!
SusanV – this was the first FFV recipe I tried and I am in love! I make it once a week now and am amazed how well it turns out each time. Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe!
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