keep eating eggplant Butch, that's what you're good at..

Eggplant rolls

You see how I obsess? In the last 2 weeks I have watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid not once, not twice, but three times. And no, it's not because I had no other movies to watch, it's because it's a very good movie. Very. Aside from that, I have also had far too many meals made with eggplant. These are just a few, and I have made these ones more than once in the last 2 weeks. (blushing)
I just can't seem to get enough of this purple goodness. Which, I admit, probably makes for very boring blogging so that's why I've thrown all my creations into one super-eggplant post. And I'm embarrassed to admit that looking at these pictures just makes me want to rush to the kitchen and cook some more. Yes, there is another big purple baby waiting for me in the fridge. But it will have to wait until tomorrow.
And in more exciting news, I'm going to Scotland on Saturday for a week. Well, it's exciting for me at least, because I've never been there before. I wonder if they have eggplant in Scotland... I'd hate to start suffering from withdrawal..

So as not to bore you with lots of details of my million and one eggplant experiments, I've given the short and sweet version down below with links to the recipes. My new secret to success is brushing the slices of eggplant with olive oil and grilling it on my grill pan. No salting required. So far, this has been a success every time. Happy me. Oh, and Molly, if you should happen to read this: fresh ricotta has been located in Heidelberg and life suddenly seems so much better.


Picture 1 and 2: Eggplant rolls with Spicy Tomato Sauce, from Epicurious. Excellent. I have made this twice already. I added roasted red pepper to the ricotta mixture, which I preferred to the original recipe. But I didn't make the tomato sauce, as I had some leftover of my own, so I can't comment on how good that part of the recipe is.
Picture 3 (bottom left): My own single serving eggplant lasagna. It's roughly the same instructions as the eggplant rolls, just layered like lasagna and topped with mozzarella and broiled until browned on top. I have made this twice already too. My cheeks are now seriously flushed with embarrassment. But I really liked the single-servingness (is that a word?) of this. And it was very tasty.
Picture 4 (bottom right): Martha's Eggplant and Lamb Al Forno
Her's is a mammoth sized dish with the eggplant stacked so high I'm not even sure how you would eat it. So I stuck to a reasonable 2 layers, grilled the eggplant first and added some goat cheese and omitted the breadcrumbs. So in actual fact, I just used her instructions for the lamb and did my own thing. But it was extremely good. I have made this twice too, but wait! only because I had leftover lamb and eggplant! come on, what did you expect me to do!

Eggplant Lasagna and Eggplant Al Forno