Eggplant Gratin (Gratin D’Aubergines, Provencal)

The upcoming release of the movie Julie & Julia (August 7, 2009) has ignited discussions about cooking and blogging and caused me to reflect on my own cooking journey. Cooking always seemed like a big mystery to me when I was growing up. My grandmothers were both talented Southern cooks and seemed to hardly measure anything. Though I truly adored their food, to my mother’s dismay I was never interested in things involving the kitchen, especially the cleaning part, so I really didn’t put forth any effort to learn. I didn’t grow up watching Julia Child and my culinary point of view was fairly limited to Southern and Midwest American foods, so it wasn’t until I tasted good Chinese food at a restaurant in the Chicago suburbs during my high school years that I realized I was missing a whole culinary world. An overseas move in 1989 and exposure to Asian and island cuisine ignited my passion for authentic regional foods. Read more

Grilled Eggplant Lasagna

When I started the South Beach Diet a few weeks ago, I had to rethink some of our meals, and less pasta was high on the list. It’s easy to get good fresh vegetables at this time of year, and we’ve kept the refrigerator stocked. I’ve had eggplant lasagna on many occasions, but always with the noodles, so this time I decided to use the eggplant in place of the noodles, thus keeping the hearty comfort food a little healthier.

Grilling the eggplant lends a nice smoky flavor to the lasagna, and I left the skin on to help hold the slices together on the grill. The sauce is our favorite spaghetti sauce from Michael’s mom, and the rest is just easy layering and baking. I made this on a weeknight after simmering the sauce all morning and afternoon, but you could also make this a weekend family meal or even for company in individual portions.

Equipment

grill
9×13 baking pan
medium mixing bowl

Ingredients

1 recipe spaghetti sauce
1 eggplant, 16 ounces (~454 g) or larger
olive oil
15 ounces (425 g) part-skim ricotta cheese
1 egg
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan + more for sprinkling on top
2 teaspoons dried basil or 3/4 cup (~30 g) fresh basil leaves, torn
8 ounces (227 g) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

Preparation

1. Prepare the sauce according to the directions. You can make this ahead and store in the refrigerator or freezer. If frozen, thaw before using.

2. Preheat the grill to medium, about 350° F/175° C.

3. Slice the eggplant into 1/4-inch (0.5 cm) rounds with the skin still on. Brush with olive oil. Grill for about 3 to 4 minutes per side.

4. Preheat the oven to 350° F/175° C.

5. In the medium mixing bowl, stir together the ricotta, egg, grated Parmesan, and dried basil. If using fresh basil, leave it out for now.

6. Spread a ladle or two of the prepared sauce in the bottom of the baking dish. Lay down a row of the grilled eggplant, then spread about 1/3 of the ricotta cheese mixture. It doesn’t have to look pretty, just make sure that it is evenly distributed, even if it’s in clumps. If using fresh basil, add 1/2 of the leaves in a layer.

7. Add about 2 more cups of sauce, then half the remaining grilled eggplant, 1/2 of the remaining cheese mixture, and the rest of the fresh basil (if using).

8. Add another 2 cups of the sauce, the rest of the grilled eggplant, and the rest of the ricotta cheese mixture. Spread the remaining sauce on top then top with the shredded mozzarella and some more Parmesan.

9. Bake uncovered in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until the lasagna is cooked all the way through and the top is bubbly and golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for about 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

More Italian Recipes

More Lasagna Recipes From Around the Blogs

101 Cookbooks – Thousand Layer Lasagne

Ms. Adventures in Italy – 3 Cheese Pesto Vegetable Lasagna

Kalyn’s Kitchen – Grilled Zucchini Lasagna with Italian, Sausage, Tomato, and Basil Sauce

One Hot Stove – Roasted Squash Onion Lasagna

Grilled Chinese Eggplant with Garlic and Ginger Sauce

We planted three eggplants in May, but sadly they were overtaken by flea beetles, a really nasty little pest that devoured the plants. Unable to find an organic solution for getting rid of them, we had to remove the plants from the garden to prevent the pests from spreading. So we’ve been buying eggplants this summer, but the loss won’t deter us from trying again next year.

It’s a good thing eggplant is in season because I’ve been on an eggplant binge. I saw these beautiful Chinese eggplants at the big Asian grocery store for just 99 cents a pound and couldn’t pass them up, or the beautiful black beauty eggplants for the same price. About six eggplants came home with me that day, and Michael was understandably curious about my plans for all the eggplant cluttering the counter. I had grill, roast, and stir fry on my mind.

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Roasted Eggplant with Gruyere

When Michael goes on travel I find myself craving comfort food. I’m sure the phenomenon is related to my energy levels, which take a dip during the weeks he is gone and are in direct correlation to the high energy my boys possess. Top that off with being awake way into the night trying to take care of all the chores that don’t get done during the day, and I start each morning with a sleep deficit and a craving for foods that taste good and give me a warm, fuzzy feeling on the inside.

Last week while he was on his latest trip, I found myself craving roasted eggplant, so I pulled out a comfort food recipe. This is another one of those dishes that doesn’t look like much when you prepare it, but the good, simple ingredients promise something more. The garlic slivers roast right along with the eggplant and infuse it with flavor, and the texture is smooth and creamy. Preparation is pretty easy and you can even do it in stages if you need to. You can roast the eggplant and process it the night before, keep it in the refrigerator overnight, warm it the next day while sauteing the mushrooms, then assemble and bake just before serving.

More Recipes You Might Like

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Grilled Stuffed Eggplant and a Cookbook Give Away

I was pleasantly surprised when the folks at The Little Hat Company in South Berwick, Maine invited me to host a giveaway of Stonewall Kitchen Favorites, and I didn’t have to think twice about it because the book is full of delicious family-style recipes and beautiful photos. One of the authors, Kathy Gunst, lives in that part of Maine, and the copy I received was signed by her, which gave me a little thrill.

Stonewall Kitchen offers specialty foods and items for the kitchen, garden, and home. They’ve grown and expanded since their humble start in 1991, when they were bottling and labeling products in a small home kitchen and taking them off to local farmer’s markets and craft fairs. Now they have stores in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maryland, and they opened the Stonewall Kitchen Cafe next to their flagship store in York, Maine in 2003. After sampling some of the foods in their cookbook, we added the cafe to our must visit list for next summer’s vacation in Maine.

If you like Ina Garten’s style of cooking, then you will probably enjoy this book as Stonewall Kitchen has a similar feel and flair for food; in fact, Garten wrote the Forward for the book. We’ve made several dishes from it, and our favorite so far is this stuffed eggplant. We cooked it on the grill instead of the oven and it worked very well; the top even browned a little. The stuffing contains chopped eggplant, pine nuts, tomatoes, bread crumbs, fresh basil, Parmesan cheese, though you can also add anchovies if you like. We both really liked the flavor, which was buoyed by the fresh tomatoes and basil from our garden, and it made a healthy, easy meal for a summer evening. On the side we had the Mediterranean Orzo Salad from the book, which is also easy and delicious. (Recipe coming later this week.)

I have one copy of this tasty cookbook to give away, courtesy of The Little Hat Company. (You must check out their site if you have young children. The little hats they make and sell are adorable!) If you want to win your own copy, leave a comment telling us about your favorite light summer meal. Apologies to my international readers, but the book can only be shipped within the continental U.S. The contest closes at 8 P.M. EST on Thursday August 14, and Random.org will select the winner. Look for the announcement of the winner in this post soon after. Read more

Italian Grilled Eggplant Cakes

Some beautiful foods just aren’t pretty to look at, and these eggplant cakes fall into that category. They taste wonderful and take on a beautiful brown color, but on the plate it looks like fried mud and grass clippings. In spite of their unassuming looks, we enjoyed these little tidbits from Marcella Hazan’s tome Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. It has long been a favorite of mine and was my introduction to true Italian cooking.

If you are up to your knees in eggplant this summer, this is a great way to use a couple of them. Hazan’s recipe calls for roasting the eggplants in the oven, but I avoid turning on the oven in July and August unless there’s a really darn good reason, such as a Daring Baker’s challenge or a birthday cake to bake. These went onto a hot grill and I turned them every 10 minutes to make sure they cooked evenly.

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