Better Bread Appetizer Recipe

Jill Davie teaches you how to make a wonderful better bread appetizer with that crunchy taste and feel.

What is it that we love so much about fried food. Well, it's that crunchy outside and that tender juicy inside. But how come we get the same effect without all the extra fat. Well, I've got just the way and I'm going to show you how. I start off with an oven at 400 degrees and if you have a convection oven, use it because it helps distribute the heat much more evenly. Two of my favorite fried foods are mushrooms and zucchini and I'm going to use what we call a standard breading procedure. I'm going to break a few eggs. Okay, I'm going to whisk up my eggs. And then I'm going to add some cornstarch, about 2 tbsp for 3 eggs. What do we love about fried food so much? It's the flavor, the flavor comes from the fat, instead of using fat, I'm going to add some seasoning. I'm going to add my seasoning directly to my egg mixture. Okay, I got some dried basil here, some oregano, alright, and I have some granulated onion, and some garlic salt. Alright, I'm going to whip this up. So I start off by dubbing my ingredients into cornstarch. So that when I put it into my egg mixture, all the egg mixture adheres really nicely and all the crevasses and the nooks and crannies of my vegetables and into the egg mix it goes. Some core in doing the breading procedure that you keep one fork wet and one fork dry, you can knock off any excess cornstarch and again, put it into my egg mixture. Goes in, I'm going to make sure that each mushroom, each piece of zucchini is really well coated in the egg mixture. If it's not, then my breading will not adhere. For the breading, what I have here are Panco Japanese Breadcrumbs. And over here I have textured soy proteins, what I like about the soy texture protein is that not only does it add that extra crunch that we love, but it also adds extra protein. So I'm going to do a few in the Japanese breadcrumbs. And I'm going to do the mushroom and soy protein. Okay. Now, I'm going to make sure they're all really, nicely coated. And if I didn’t have that cornstarch layer and then the egg wash, this would not coat as nicely, so they're very important steps. And I'm going to put them out on to a cookie sheet. Before I put these in my 400 degree oven, I'm going to cook them very liberally with the canola spray. That helps pay a really crispy crust. Here you go. And now, while I'm waiting for those to get nice and crunchy, I'm going to make a plate. I have here some marina sauce, and I have a low fat blue cheese dipping sauce. I'm going to start in the middle of the plate. And I'm going to put a little bit of this blue cheese low fat sauce, alright. Then in the center, I'm going to put a little bit of this marina sauce and just real simple tomato sauce. Oh yeah! Those are looking beautiful. Alright, now I'm just going to plate them up. Okay, these are breaded not fried. They have all the crunchy goodness and all the great flavor without the fat.