My poor Charlie is not madly keen about eggplant, but he has to suffer one eggplant dish every week during the summer. That’s the deal: I have an eggplant dish a week as long as eggplant is in season at the farmers market, and I never buy/cook eggplant the rest of the year.
So here’s what I did, since I had some stuff in the fridge to use up.
I sliced the eggplant long-ways (or length-wise, if you’re not from Kentucky), dredged it in flour and Panko, and fried it in olive oil.
The eggplant soaked up hella oil. Next time, I might bake them.
Okay. After they cooked and drained and cooled, I spread them with this tomato pesto #4 Daughter, the amazing Sara Marian, gave me, put a piece of string cheese (mozzarella) in each, and rolled it up. I tucked the rolls into a bread loaf pan and sprinkled on shredded Italian 3-cheese blend.
Oh! I also topped it with the leftover flour/panko.
If I hadn’t had the pesto, I would have used tomato sauce, or maybe tomato paste, with Penzeys Italian Herb Mix.
Using my toaster oven, I cooked this for about an hour at 350F.
It came out really good but, as I said, the eggplant had soaked up gallons of oil, which cooked out. I had to put paper towels into the pan to soak up the oil. Yuck.
But the end product was DELICIOUS!
I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies about pea salad. We like pea salad.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about a surplus of oil.
MA
Roy A Ackerman, PhD, EA
August 6, 2019 at 9:19amLooks like a great simple dish.
Marian Allen
August 6, 2019 at 12:57pmThat it was. Also delicious, once I got the oil out of it. lol
L. Diane Wolfe
August 6, 2019 at 5:46pmMake that veggie cheese and I could do that. (Total vegan.) I bet baking the eggplant would work. (We don’t fry anything.) Or maybe in the air fryer.
Marian Allen
August 7, 2019 at 8:42amI would totally use veggie cheese, if I could get it out here in the sticks. Our local store used to carry it, but stopped. š
joey
August 11, 2019 at 4:05pmOhhhh yeeeah š Sounds great! I love eggplant as does The Mister, but the kids are like, “NO”. So we don’t eat it often. When I fry it, I salt it for a good long while, and then I rinse it, pat it dry, and brush egg whites across it, then dredge and fry. Crispy, not oily, I promise. Sadly, my preference is baba ganoush, wholly time consuming, but I make a wicked good eggplant parm in short time š
Marian Allen
August 11, 2019 at 4:08pmShort-time Eggplant Parm is always good!