Those may or may not have been Nick’s words. Either way, he liked it! Which is a far cry from the time I asked him to grab eggplant, pasta sauce, cheese, and bread crumbs (for eggplant parmesan) from the store, and he conveniently forgot to get the eggplant.
Sunday morning was our weekly-ish pilgrimage to Costco. We live 2 minutes from the store, but must be gluttons for punishment. We always go on the weekend. When we’re hungry. Without a list.
We headed to Costco with 3 things on our mental list: eggs, a chicken, and broccoli. That’s it. We only have to feed ourselves for a few days this week, so the list was light.
Naturally we walked away with: eggs, a chicken, broccoli, raspberries, avocados, snapea crisps, cheddar cheese, mozzarella, tomatoes and eggplant.
Don’t. Go. To. Costco. Hungry.
But this leads me to today’s post. The tomatoes and eggplant. It just sounded good. Which is totally random. But trust me, it’s probably the “meatiest” vegetarian dish I’ve ever made. We ate it as a veggie side, but it would also be good as a sauce.
Here goes!
Ingredients
2lbs tomatoes (I like the campari)
4 medium sized eggplants (Costco sells a bag with 4, that’s what I used)
5 garlic gloves, crushed
1/2 cup diced onions
3 Tbs olive oil
5 or so leaves of basil
1. Dice the eggplants (0.5-1″ cubes), salt (1-2Tbs) and let sit in a colander for at least 1 hr (fill a slightly smaller bowl with water or cans or anything heavy, and put it over the eggplant to help get even more liquid out)
2. Dice the tomatoes and scoop out as much of the “guts” as you can, lightly salt (1tsp) and let sit in a colanger to drain
3. When you’re ready to make the dish, rinse the eggplant well. Then pat/squash dry with paper towels. 4. Combine tomatoes, eggplant, garlic and 2 tbs of oil. Layout on a jelly roll pan. Bake at 375 for 40 min. Toss half way through.
5. Saute onions and remaining olive oil. Combine with roasted tomato/eggplant.
6. Serve with thinly sliced basil as garnish