Baba Ganoush

I'm a bit late in sharing this recipe with you all.  I had made this several weeks ago when eggplants were still coming in my CSA share, but finishing up the post somehow fell through the cracks. Better late than never I suppose!

Hummus has always been my go to homemade dip, but now that it is pretty much as ubiquitous as salsa, I do tire of it after a while. While baba ganoush is a bit more complex to make (as complex as roasting an eggplant can be...) it makes for a nice change. The ingredients are pretty much the same as hummus, but the eggplant gives this dip a lighter texture and flavor than you get with chickpeas. 

Eggplant Caponata

What a day today! We've had veggies from the CSA slowly building up over the last couple weeks and I decided to put some serious effort to use them up before more comes in this week. First, the remaining cucumbers went into another batch of bread and butter pickles (the first batch of which turned out fantastically by the way). My next target was 3 pounds of yellow squash that I used to make a triple batch of fritters. I used the same recipe as before, but this time mixed in chopped Swiss chard that I sauteed with a clove of garlic and the last of the hot peppers. By tripling the recipe, I ended up with 12 big fritters, most of those will be frozen for a future meal. After all that work, there was still eggplant and several bell peppers left to use, and from that I decided to make caponata.

Caponata is a Sicilian dish centered around eggplant that is cooked until very soft with a variety of other vegetables in a sweet, vinegary sauce. In addition to the eggplant, a traditional caponata should have celery and capers in the mix, but after that there are many other things you could add depending on your taste. Bell pepper was already in for me, and to that I added onion, tomato, garlic and olives. This is a fairly simple dish to make and it gets better with age, which is good because the eggplant I had was rather large, and when all was complete I had close to 2 quarts of caponata. We typically eat this as a snack on chips or slices of baguette, though it can be used as a side dish and will go quite well with seafood.

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Eggplant
Bell Pepper

Ingredients
6 cups eggplant, cubed
1 tbs kosher salt
Olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1/2 cup green olives, chopped
1-1/2 cups canned crushed tomato
3 tbs capers, rinsed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbs sugar
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup fresh basil, finely chopped.

Preparation

Toss the cubed eggplant with 1 tbs salt and then place in a colander over a bowl and let sit for 15 minutes so the salt can draw some of the water out of the eggplant. When the time is up, give the eggplant a quick rinse with fresh water and allow to drain completely. Spread the eggplant on a sheet pan and season with pepper and drizzle with olive oil, toss to coat then roast in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Remove and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat one tablespoon of oil over medium heat in a large nonstick skillet, then add the onion, bell pepper and celery and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic, season with salt and pepper and cook for another minute. Add the eggplant to the pan and cook, stirring for another 5 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and the eggplant starts to fall apart.

Add the crushed tomatoes to the pan along with the capers, olives, sugar and vinegar. Bring to a simmer then turn the heat to low and cook, stirring often, for 20 to 30 minutes, until the vegetables are very tender and the mixture is quite thick and fragrant. Stir in the basil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Allow to cool to room temperature before serving.

Eggplant Parmesean

Eggplant Parmesan is another one of those meals that I felt I owed to my Italian heritage to know how to make it right. The word “right” of course is a very subjective word, especially when it comes to food, but I've received enough positive responses to this recipe that I’m confident even if you don’t agree that it’s right, you will at least think it darn good. 

Most versions of this dish that I've come across cut the eggplant very thin before breading and frying it, and the result does not really have much eggplant taste, mostly because in order to get a substantial meal out of the thin slices, you have to layer dozens of them to the point that you are eating more breading than eggplant. It also ends up being a lot of work to slice, bread, fry and assemble all that eggplant. Solving this was ultimately very simple; I just cut the eggplant thicker, about 3/4 of an inch. 

The first time I worked with the thick slices, I had cut them the long way and this proved to make assembly a bit tricky. When you have dozens of the thin slices, it’s easy to fold, twist and pack them together in the baking dish, but the big pieces proved a challenge to fit them in place without resorting to butchering them into little chunks, thus defeating the whole purpose, which was to have large WHOLE slices that would allow you to taste the eggplant. From this bump in the road came the idea to instead slice the eggplant crosswise into rounds that would stack easily to form individual servings. Not only did that solve the assembly problem, but it makes serving a whole lot easier as well. 

On this particular day, I had the idea to make use of some crocks I've had sitting in storage (after making French onion soup in them once a million years ago…) to create a fun presentation, but it’s definitely not necessary to dirty so many more dishes. Just use a 9x13 baking dish and stack up each serving next to each other. You should be able to get 6-8 servings into one baking dish depending on the size of your eggplant. Note that in the picture above I have trimmed the eggplant rounds to a size that will fit in the crocks. This isn't necessary when using a baking dish, just assemble them with the larger rounds on the bottom layer. 

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Eggplant

Ingredients
2 large eggplants
2-3 cups marinara sauce
Oil for frying
2-3 eggs
1.5 cups breadcrumbs
1 cup flour
1/2 cup grated parmesean
1 lb fresh mozzarella
Salt and pepper
1 tbs chopped fresh basil

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Slice the eggplants into rounds approximately 3/4 in thick then lay each slice flat and cut off the skin. Prepare a breading line on your counter using three shallow bowls (pie plates work really well for this if you have them). Place the flour in the first bowl and the eggs (beaten) in the second. In the third bowl, mix together the breadcrumbs, 1/4 cup of the grated parmesan and a 1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper. Heat about 1/4 inch of oil in a large skillet over medium heat until it reaches 300 degrees. Working along your breading line, take a slice of eggplant and dredge it in the flour to coat completely, shaking off any excess. Next, dip it in the egg to coat and then place in the breadcrumb mixture, turning to coat all surfaces. Place the breaded eggplant in the hot oil and fry for 3-4 minutes on each side until golden brown and then remove to a sheet pan. Adjust the heat on your oil as needed to keep it neat 300 degrees. Repeat with all the eggplant. Once all the eggplant is fried and has cooled enough to handle, you can begin assembly. Slice the fresh mozzarella into disks around 1/8 inch thick. You want to have two slices of cheese for each serving of eggplant. My 1 lb ball of mozzarella was just enough for 6 servings with a bit left over for my daughter to nibble on. 

To assemble, place 2 tbs of sauce in the bottom of each crock (if using a baking dish, spread a thin layer of sauce to coat the bottom of the dish) then place one slice of eggplant on top of the sauce. Top with another 2 tbs of sauce, then a slice of mozzarella and then sprinkle with the parmesean. Repeat one more time (eggplant, sauce, mozzarella, parmesean) and lastly top with a bit of chopped basil and a grind of black pepper. Place in the oven for 20 minutes, or until everything is heated through and the top layer of cheese has melted and browned in spots. Let stand for a few minutes before serving.