Thursday, September 01, 2005

Super Easy Eggplant

My husband is not an eggplant lover. It all goes back to a diasterous attempt I made to pickle it about 14 years ago. (He says I tried to poison him with an excess of vinegar. I say stop being such a baby, just because your eyes watered for a week!) Needless to say, the appearance of three large eggplants in this weeks CSA pickup displeased him. I had to make it good or eggplants would bear the label "gross" forever in our home.

Tonight I peeled them, cut them into thick slices, sprinkled them with a little salt and left them sitting in a colander in the sink for a half hour. This draws the bitterness out and is a must in my experience. I then rinsed them under cold water and placed them on a greased cookie sheet. I sprinkled them with garlic powder, parsley, thyme, oregano, fresh chopped basil and a bit of onion powder (an Italian seasoning mix would probably work well bt I didn't have any on hand.) I sprayed a bit of olive oil over the top and popped them in a 375 degree oven. I cooked them until they were tender throughout (this varies based on how thick you cut them but mine took about a half hour) and served them with pasta and sauce.

My husband loved them (WHEW!) and declared that the leftovers would be good in sandwiches tomorrow.

1 comment:

Katie said...

Me too! BTW, they were super yummy the next day with nayonaise and tomato on toasted whole wheat bread.

I've never grown eggplants myself, are they difficult to grow?