A big gorgeous eggplant just cries out to be used in a dish like this one from Women’s Health magazine.
Eggplant Parmesan Lasagna
eggplant
Barbecued Eggplant with Miso Glaze
The secret of this elegant dish, served by chef Ian Chalermkittichai at his New York restaurant the Ember Room, is that it’s broiled in the oven, the direct heat source from above providing a heavy, steady heat that both tenderizes the eggplant and caramelizes its sweet-savory miso glaze.
Escalivada
This recipe is from Eric Roberts of The Iberian Pig and was demonstrated at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market this summer. A lovely side dish, a lovely snack all by itself.
Woody Back’s Charred Tomato Soup, with Eggplant Chow Chow
Charring vegetables is one way Woody Back, executive chef of Roswell’s Table & Main, likes to add flavor to his dishes. When he’s cooking, he’s looking for six components – fat, acid, salt, aromatic, sweet and bitter. The charring provides the bitter in this soup. He demonstrated these recipes at the Morningside Farmers Market and Peachtree Road Farmers Markets this year.
He likes garnishing the soup with crumbles of soft goat cheese, but croutons offer a way to add a little crunch. He’s adamant about his crouton preparation though. No toasting squares of bread in the oven. “That just dries out the bread and gives you something like a rock. Melt butter in a skillet and toast your croutons until the surfaces are golden.” One more tip for crouton making – no little cubes. Just tear small pieces of bread from the loaf for irregular pieces with lots of craggy surfaces to soak up butter and provide a satisfying crunch.
Broiled Eggplant with Tahini and Eggs
Love this recipe from Saveur. With the small eggplants in today’s box, you can serve one eggplant per person as a main dish.
Grilled Eggplant Sandwiches
This is more inspiration than recipe. The original idea came from Fine Cooking magazine.
Eggplant and Herb Pickle
This Persian pickle is a great way to serve eggplant. I got the original recipe from Saveur magazine. The dried mint is a totally Arabic thing. Don’t substitute fresh. Just skip it if you don’t have dried.
Eggplant Hash
This recipe is from Deborah Geering, local vegetarian food writer. She suggests it’s perfect with eggs and toast. Peppers are sort of “required” for hash, so if you don’t have any, run to your favorite local farmers market and pick some up. Any pepper will do – bell peppers, fancy Italian frying peppers … even hot peppers depending on how much heat you like.
Eggplant Un-Parmesan
The plethora of eggplant we’ve been receiving can be as daunting to some as a weekly small bag of okra. This recipe from Mark Bittman can be served as is, or over cornmeal mush or polenta if you still have some Riverview ground corn in your freezer from last year.
Eggplant/Squash Baba Ghanoush
I find it interesting that in all our eggplant recipes, we don’t have one for baba ghanoush. Well, that’s what I’m making from the eggplants in the box. Truth be told, it’s one of the few ways my husband will eat eggplant.
This one is from “Plenty More: Vibrant Vegetable Cooking from London’s Ottolenghi” by Yotam Ottelenghi and actually uses squash. I’m going to use up the squash from today’s box, but augment it with eggplant. This is a pretty fancy version, but worth knowing about.