Vegetable stuffed eggplant
grownandgathered
Like your nonna makes. Vegetable stuffed eggplant, with autumn vegetables from the garden and hand-made feta using raw milk from the cow.
Serves 4 // Time 1 hour
Recipe:
Every week we try to have "family dinner night", where our staff and ourselves share a meal (although lately time seems to have gotten away from us and we have skipped a few!). This week, this was the meal we all shared. Some of us ate it as it is and some served it with brown rice - up to you!
INGREDIENTS
4 big eggplants or 6 smaller eggplants
500g of tomatoes or 500ml of passata
1 onion
1-2 bunches of chard (whatever you have got!)
150g crumbled feta
Half a bunch of dill
Juice of a quarter of a lemon
1 tbsp finely chopped pine nuts
Pepper and sea salt
1 tsp rapadura sugar (or raw sugar)
Good olive oil
METHOD
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Heat a large fry pan with olive oil, over low-medium heat.
- Chop onion finely and sweat in the pan with a tsp pepper.
- Chop eggplant in to halves, scoop out the middle so there is a about a 1cm boarder around the eggplant. Place eggplant halves on a baking tray and coat the outside lightly with olive oil.Roughly chop scooped-out eggplant, tomatoes (or simply add passata) and garlic - add to the pan with a good splash of olive oil, rapadura sugar and a pinch of salt. Turn to high heat and put the lid on, stirring often.
- Once it begins to "break down", turn stove down to medium or to a simmer. Shred chard into strips and cut dill finely - add to the pan.
- Put the lid on and cook down until everything looks "melted".
- Add it to a bowl and mix in feta, pine nuts and lemon juice.
- Fill eggplant halves with mixture and place in the oven for 30 minutes.
N.B.
*If you have some leftover rice or breadcrumbs, place on the top of the eggplants before putting them in the oven. This will make the tops crunchy and delicious
*You can also add rice to the eggplant stuffing mixture, however you will need to season to taste (e.g. more salt, pepper etc).
*Don't discard chard and dill stalks, add them to the pan, but make sure they are chopped finely.
