Individual Eggplant Parm Puffs

These little eggplant Parmesan rounds are the cutest appetizer for a dinner party, potluck, or holiday. Swap the fried, breaded coating of traditional eggplant parm for a flaky puff pastry base (store-bought or make the easiest rough puff pastry recipe) and top it with a quick homemade tomato garlic sauce, a layer of cheese, a slice of roasted eggplant, and a tomato and basil garnish. Thanks to the pre-roasting, the eggplant is perfectly browned and almost crisp, making it appealing even to eggplant haters. They are beautiful, taste great, and look fancy but come together super easily.

Should You Peel the Skin Off Eggplant?

In this recipe, the slices of eggplant are roasted for 30 minutes before the puff pastry rounds are assembled and baked again. Pre-roasting ensures the vegetable turns golden brown, is softened fully, and is just shy of crispy. Larger eggplants tend to have thicker skin, which can make it a bit tough and hard to bite into when cooked. Some don’t like that texture. It’s up to you whether to remove the skin from your eggplant or leave it on in this dish (I prefer to use small to medium-sized eggplant for this recipe and the skin softens just fine, so I keep mine on!).

Do You Need to Salt the Eggplant?

Salting the sliced eggplant for traditional eggplant Parmesan is a good idea because it draws excess moisture out of the vegetable before it’s cooked which can otherwise make the fried, breaded coating pretty soggy (and even bitter, when eggplants weren’t bred to be more mild as they are today). There’s no breading or frying in this recipe, so there’s no need to pre-salt and dry the eggplant; you will, however, add salt (and pepper) to the eggplant before you roast it. Since it’s roasted once before the puffs are baked, the eggplant will have already cooked off most of its moisture. Par-baking the puff pastry also prevents any sogginess!

Quick and Easy Tomato Sauce Layer

The sauce layer of these tiny tarts consists of a simple, homemade tomato spread that calls for only a handful of ingredients: tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes. You basically just throw all of the ingredients in a pan and cook them down into a thick tomato sauce.

What to Eat Eggplant Parmesan With

These mini eggplant parmesan puff pastries as perfect as an appetizer to a heavier meal; I’d serve them with a protein, like chicken, and a light, bright salad or another fresh vegetable dish, light grilled zucchini or broccolini with lemon. In my opinion, you can do without any other carb-heavy item since the puff pastry is pretty satisfying.

Bake Notes

• The number of pastries you’ll get depends on a number of factors; the size of your puff pastry and how thin you roll it out, and the size of your cookie cutter or the circular object you use to cut out the circles.
• Any leftover roasted eggplant is a great snack!
• When cutting the circles out of the pastry, use your palms to push down and all the way through the pastry, but avoid wiggling the cutter around to loosen the dough—just push down and lift up. Wiggling it kind of seals the edges of the dough and prevents the pastry from rising as high.

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