I’ll confess right off. Eggplant and I have a rocky relationship.
It’s not because eggplant isn’t Robert-Redford handsome. Just look at that smooth skin and that sensuous coloring.
It’s also not because I don’t try. I do. I just have trouble finding stellar recipes that showcase eggplant.
I do have a few recipes that I like a lot that incorporate eggplant and, in fact, I have posted some of them on Blue Cayenne (Blue Cayenne Eggplant Recipes ). It just seems like eggplant should be much more important in my cooking life. After all, eggplant is embraced as a key food in much of the world.
So, I’ve decided to give eggplant another chance in my kitchen and I’m on the lookout for great eggplant recipes. If you have one, please send it to me. Let’s start with this one. It is an adaptation of a Deborah Madison recipe from her beautiful cookbook, Vegetable Literacy. In her introduction to the recipe, she mentions that the dish was served as a main dish by the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm. The farm is a 13,000-member organization that homes (and sells and exchanges) the seeds of 20,000 heirloom and open-pollinated plants in a quest to protect biodiversity in this age of genetically-engineered agriculture. If you are interested in their project, here is a link to their site: https://www.seedsavers.org. They sound like good folks to me.
Here is the recipe.
Save RecipeIngredients
- 2 pounds oval eggplants
- Sea salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 C. heavy cream (or milk)
- 1 C. grated Asiago cheese (or Parmesan)
- 2 T. chopped basil (or to your taste)
- 4 T. olive oil
- 1 large onion (finely diced)
- 1 large clove garlic (minced or pressed)
- 1 pound tomatoes (peeled, seeded and diced)
- Freshly ground pepper
- Chopped parsley or cilantro for garnish
Instructions
- Peel the eggplants and dice them. Toss the cubes of eggplant in a small amount of salt and put in a colander sitting over a bowl. Set the eggplant cubes aside to drain while you prepare the rest of this dish.
- Prepare the custard by whisking the eggs and cream together. Stir ina few tablespoons of cheese and 1 T. of the chopped basil. Set custard aside.
- Heat oven to 375 degrees F and oil an 8 by 10 gratin dish. (Alternatively, you can use 1 cup ramekins.)
- Return to the eggplant and blot the moisture off the surface of the eggplant with a kitchen towel. Put 2 T. oil in a large nonstick skillet and turn on the heat to medium high. When the oil is hot, add the eggplant and cook it for 12-15 minutes until the cubes turn soft and are golden brown in spots. Stir this mixture while it is cooking to monitor it and keep it from burning. Scrape this mixture into a bowl and set aside.
- Put 2 T. oil into the same pan that you cooked the eggplant in, return the heat to medium heat and add the chopped onion. Cook the onion, stirring occasionally, until it is softened and begins to take on a bit of color. This will take about 5 minutes. Add the minced garlic to the pan and cook until the garlic becomes fragrant. Add the tomatoes and the cooked eggplant to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Cook this mixture for about 5 minutes. Taste. Add salt if necessary. Transfer this mixture into your prepared gratin dish.
- Pour the custard over the vegetable mixture and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. You can add a bit more cheese here.
- Bake about 30 minutes. At the end of baking you can run the gratin under the broiler to get it a little more brown. Be careful, though, the browing occurs very quickly under the broiler.
- Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes before serving. Garnish with chopped parsley or cilantro.
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You can buy a copy of Madison’s book on Amazon. Here is the link:Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy.
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