Eggplant love the heat, but in my experience they really take off bearing good-sized fruit once the weather cools a little. Here's what I picked this weekend, along with some melons and chile peppers. There are at least as many left on the plants that I'll need to pick in a few days.
My favorite use for eggplant is in eggplant parmigiana. This year I found a recipe using baked rounds that taste-wise I actually thought was on a par with traditional fried versions. As usual, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. Here's a link to the recipe I used although as usual, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I only let the salted eggplant sit out for two hours; I probably used closer to two than one tablespoon of oil on the baking sheet, and I used prepackaged shredded cheese and bottled marina sauce rather than making my own.
Obviously there is far more eggplant here than I could use in a reasonable length of time, so I'll need to freeze some of it. I've tried several methods in the past, including blanching the rounds, roasting cubes, and cooking and mashing. Because I've been dissatisfied with the taste and texture of the blanched frozen rounds, this year I'm going to try salting, breading, and baking them as I would for fresh eggplant parmigiana, then freezing the cooked rounds.
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