Soak the eggplant cubes in water for 5 minutes, drain & rinse off. Heat up the sherry and add eggplant & mushrooms, cover, and cook on low til done (took about 10 minutes, and there was quite a bit of liquid from the mushrooms). Add garlic a few minutes into this (whenever it's chopped up :-) When eggplant is almost done, add red pepper cubes & cook a few more minutes. Then, add the red pepper flakes, cottage cheese (I blended first in a mini food processor so it was smooth), basil, salt to taste. Mix and cook several more minutes. Add nut. Yeast. I ate this on fresh linguine.

The interesting effect that happened was that the sauce developed "threads" as if it had grated, melted real cheese (if you know what I mean). This happened before I added the nut. Yeast (I added the nut. Yeast to make it cheesier to take advantage of its texture). Any idea what combined to make this happen? Could it be the cottage cheese (brand was Hood, and it was my first time adding that to a stovetop sauce) or the sherry (usually I saute just in water or stock)?

Try this if you want to feel like you're eating pasta sauce w/cheese! I don't like that texture much myself, unfortunately.... but it was very realistic, complete to sticking to the fork as I ate! If you try it let me know how it comes out. I still have the same ingredients on hand so I may try some more experiments with this combination, esp. Since I do like cheesy lasagna....

Mmconv)