Potato Napoleon with Cilantro Pesto

Napoleon is actually a layered pastry dish made with layered puff pastry dough,nuts,cream etc.Basically they are sweet custard slices.Savoury versons are also available with spinach,potato eggplant etc.In savoury versions, the puff pastry is substitute by a vegetable like eggplant,zucchini and potato,mushrooms,etc or they may be an ingredient.I first heard about in a foodie talk show and was curious as to what they were.After searching a lot I recreated a potato napoleon and here it is.The recipe is experimented from various sources.

Ingredients:

Potato: 1 big
Eggplants: optional few round slices or 1 medium eggplant
Mozarella cheese: few slices or little shredded

Pesto: Ingredients to be adjusted as per taste

Cilantro/Coriander: small bunch
Walnuts: handful
Parmesan Cheese
Olive Oil
Garlic: 1 clove or more as per taste

Salt & Pepper

Preparation:
Slice potatoes using a mandoline or knife and cook till little tender in boiling salted water.Keep aside.If using eggplants, slice them into medium thick rounds and apply salt and keep aside for a few minutes.Then gently squeeze these and shallow fry them in a pan or broil or roast them.I had leftover roasted slices -roasted at 450F for 10-12 minutes after drizzling with pepper and oil- which I used.This is optional though. You can use tomatoes,zucchini or whatever colourful vegetable that you or stick to potatoes only.

Meanwhile combine the all the pesto ingredients including little salt,pepper and little oil and blend well adding extra oil in between to obtain the needed consistency.

Take a potato slice,put a spoonful of pesto,cover with an eggplant round.Lightly press the eggplant round so that the pesto is spread out.Top this eggplant with more pesto followed by another potato slice.You can repeat many layers-I did only 2 as I had used only one potato.Finally top the dish with shredded or sliced mozarella cheese and keep in a baking sheet.Do this process till all the potato slices are used up and drizzle more pepper if needed and broil this for 6-8 minutes in the oven till the cheese is lightly browned.

Alterntively if you are not using any cheese topping,you can warm the pesto a little (or use raw if preferred)and spoon it over potatoes and create layers and simply serve as an appetizer.

It was tasty atleast much much better than expected and would be making it again,and this layered approach makes it a bit different from normal appetizers we see.We can also say it is pesto sandwiched between potato slices-potato pesto double layered sandwich or whatever.Well,Whatever name you call it,you should enjoy the dish-it is tasty and easy to prepare. :D

Gorging on this appetizer on Recipe Marathon Day#6,lets see what fellow athletes are putting forth in their party trays:

1) DK 2) Siri 3) Srivalli 4) Ranji 5)PJ 6)Medha 7)Priya 8)Bhawna 9)Raaji 10)Ruchii 11)Anu 12)Kamala 13)Roopa 14)Divya Kudua 15)Rekha 16)Divya M 17)Lakshmi 18)Raaga 19)LakshmiVenkatesh 20) Sripriya 21)Viji 22)Kamalika 23)Pavani