Stuffed Eggplant, The Ironic and Easy Recipe

If there's one thing you can say about my cooking mode, it's "easy."  You can also use synonyms like "simple."  I have these very vague memories about once making stuffed eggplant many years decades ago, and I never tried it again.  It would require following a cookbook while cooking, which isn't on my multi-tasking menu.  But then I bought these gorgeous gigantic eggplants in the shuk, Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda-Open Market, and they just cried out to be stuffed.

The only problem was that I really didn't know how to stuff eggplants.  So I called out to facebook friends for help, and Risa of Isramom sent me a link to a recipe, davka, based on something I had served her. Ironic isn't it?  I didn't know whether to feel flattered or stupid.  Click on or paste this for her recipe. http://isramom.blogspot.co.il/2010/11/low-carb-recipe-inspired-by-lunch-with.html I made mine a bit differently.  I'll explain with the photos I took.  The moral of this being that there are no real rules to making stuffed eggplant or most other things. Just enjoy and use what you have in the house.

Ingredients I used

• 1 very large eggplant (a few small ones would be perfectly fine, too)
• 1 medium onion, cut small
• a few pieces of fresh garlic; you won't get arrested if you use the powdered stuff
• some cooking oil
• a can of crushed tomatoes, or tomato sauce or paste, or cut up a few ripe tomatoes
• 800 grams or a couple of pounds (or less) of chopped meat or poultry

First I sliced the eggplant in half and then cut the "inside" out from the eggplant.  You need a sharp knife and a grapefruit spoon to do it easily.

Place the empty eggplant shells in the baking dish.

Put the cut vegetables in the pot and add the onion, garlic and oil.  Saute a bit and then add the crushed tomatoes and after that the chopped meat.

Cook a few minutes stirring well and then stuff the eggplant.  If you end up with too much of a stuffing mixture, then take out some other vegetables to stuff. I used peppers, but you can use large tomatoes or squash or even just bake the mixture as a meatloaf.

Bake in a hot oven until well cooked. Remember that you've already partially cooked the meat so it shouldn't take call that long.

Enjoy!  We ate one of them on Friday night, and it was delicious!