I might be deeply ambivalent about:
* fall (less the weather cooling off and more how long it insists up staying cooled off for; doesn’t 8 months seem excessive?),
* stuffed vegetables (the good ones are great but the bad ones a very underseasoned-rice-in-green-peppers-cooked-until-soggy-and-gray, you know?),
* and eggplant parmesan (mostly the staggering amount of effort made to fry and crisp rounds of eggplant only to burrow it in crisp-cancelling sauce and cheese, why)

… but this dish manages to enlist parts of all three and it exceeded every expectation. I first spied a version of this on The Kitchn. I liked that you get all the flavors of a great eggplant parmesan including a crunch on top but with a lot less work. You could actually make this on a weeknight. The ingredient list is pretty short. Plus, we’re at that perfect cooking point in the year, when almost everything is not just in season but bountiful at the markets but it (occasionally) cools off enough that baking things in the oven is appealing again. It never lasts long enough and this is such a fun way to celebrate it.

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