A fresh take on stuffed eggplant
Roasted and rolled slices burst with creamy ricotta and pesto-dressed pasta
When I get busy, cooking becomes less therapeutic and creative. Instead, it’s a means to an end: It’s simply easier to toss something together that you don’t have to think about because you’ve done it a hundred times before. When I’m entertaining, however, I don’t mind gravitating toward something that I might not have time to cook midweek just for me. Eggplant, for example.
Several years ago, while preparing to cook for a friend, I wanted to make a light vegetarian dish that would look gorgeous plated and taste as good as it looked. Holding a beautiful, glossy eggplant while standing in the produce section at the market, the image of a dish I once had at a restaurant flashed through my mind. It was an eggplant dish that had just about made me swoon! The menu listed it as imbottiti — thin slices of eggplant rolled and stuffed with pasta and cheese and topped with tomatoes.
So I bought the eggplant, took it home and made my version of the dish from memory. Even though it had been a long time since I’d enjoyed the restaurant version, my re-creation was successful and a hit at dinner.
After making it several more times, I posted the recipe and photo shortly after I started my blog in 2007. I received many notes from people who had the restaurant’s version of the dish and were happy to find my recipe so they could make it at home.
In those early days of blogging, I didn’t often take step-by-step photos. A couple of weekends ago, I decided to make the dish to take more photos for this story. I invited my youngest sister — an avid home cook — to help. She was enthusiastic about playing photo assistant and “sous chef.” However, she admitted to not being an eggplant lover. “They’re so bitter!” she exclaimed. “They don’t have to be,” I told her. Years ago, while I was watching an episode of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats,” he shared some tips for choosing eggplants that have never let me down:
Check the eggplant’s globe end and note the shape of the dimple. Is it round or oval? The flower the fruit grew from was male (yes, eggplant is considered a fruit). These eggplants are more likely to have fewer seeds. A thin wavy line or dash indicates the flower was female and more likely to have more seeds. Eggplant seeds are bitter; more seeds, more bitterness. (A note about the meaning of these dimples: Some sources claim this is a myth, but my personal experience has been that these dimples have been good indicators of potential bitterness, so I stand by Brown’s explanation and continue to share it.)
Choose eggplants with a rich purple color and glossy, taut skin. The eggplant is too mature and bitter if the gloss or color is dull.
If you have a choice between a large eggplant or a smaller one, take the smaller one. Again, a less mature eggplant naturally has fewer seeds.
Even off the vine, an eggplant continues to produce more seeds as it sits around waiting for you to cook it. Most sources tell you that you can store eggplant in the vegetable crisper of your refrigerator for 4 to 5 days. I’ve found that to be too long. Cutting into a 5-day-old eggplant, you’re likely to find a center turned brownish from seeds — too many even for this eggplant lover. I cook my eggplants within a day or two to keep the bitterness at bay.
To salt or not to salt?
Many recipes call for salting cut-up eggplant before cooking to draw out the moisture (and, some say, bitterness, too). Salting and sweating eggplant is crucial if you’re frying it, as I have found salted eggplant won’t absorb as much oil. It also does change the eggplant’s texture, giving it a nice creaminess. However, as a rule, because I carefully choose my eggplants, I’ve gotten into the habit of rarely salting it before cooking, especially if I’m in a hurry, when I’m roasting or quickly sauteing it. Skipping the salting step cuts down on preparation time, but try it both ways and do what works best for you.
If you decide to salt the eggplant, slice it according to the thickness indicated in a recipe (¼-inch thick planks for instance if the recipe asks for a ¼-inch dice). Generously season both sides, place in a colander set over a bowl and let stand for an hour or up to 4 hours. Use paper towels to blot off moisture and salt; do not rinse it (a lot of the surface salt will have melted with the moisture and drained away). The eggplant is now ready to chop or use as is.
Admittedly, cooking eggplant is a little more involved than holding a bunch of asparagus in one hand, cutting off the woody ends, then steaming or sauteing them to quick perfection. But it isn’t THAT much harder. I’ve tossed chunks into stir-fries and tagines, sliced them into planks for eggplant “steaks,” lightly breaded them and stacked them with rounds of fresh mozzarella for an easy eggplant Parmesan, grilled them to use as a pizza topping and roasted them directly on the grates of a gas stove for homemade baba ganoush.
When my sister pulled the roasted eggplant slices from the oven, I took one and popped half into my mouth. I gave her the other. Her “Mmm, that’s good!” told me I had proved my point that not all eggplant is bitter. When we sat down to eat our finished dish at the end of the photo shoot, she was surprised at how much she loved it.
I successfully converted another family member to something we didn’t grow up eating, which always makes me happy.
8:30
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