There is nothing that strikes fear into my heart like that thought of cooking with eggplant. Many years ago I attempted a few recipes with Eggplant and they were teeeeerrible! I haven’t really done much with eggplant since then. But I decided to be brave and try it again for two reasons…I love eggplant dishes in restaurants and a client of mine was recently regaling me with all the amazing eggplant recipes she has been preparing. So here I am and man am I glad I came! It was super yummy and really easy! I hope you like it!
First peel and dice your eggplant into fairly big pieces. I used a small to medium one, but next time I will probably use a large one…now that I am feeling a little braver 🙂
Then I allowed my eggplant to sweat for about 10 min while I prepared the sauce. Put the diced eggplant in a colander with salt. This will allow some of the bitter juices in the eggplant to leach out. Many recipes say the eggplant needs to sit for about 30min, but I only had 10min and it turned out really well 🙂
While my eggplant is sweating it out, I prepared my sauce. I never buy premade sauce because the homemade version is so easy. I got about 6 leaves of basil, some oregano and rosemary from my garden and this plus garlic, onion, salt and pepper is all I am adding spice wise. See so simple!
I had a ton of cherry tomatoes from my garden that were wilting my my fridge, so I decided to blenderize those in lieu of canned tomatoes, but you can use 2 cans of diced tomatoes instead.
I blenderized about 5 cups of fresh tomatoes with about 5-6cloves of garlic
Pour this into a crockpot, add a cup of vegetable broth and your minced herbs.
Now to your sweaty eggplant. Rinse the eggplant with cold water in the colander, then add to a sauce pan with olive oil and about 1/2-1 cup of diced onion. Season with a pinch of course sea salt and fresh ground pepper.
Saute until its golden brown and smelling delicious! about 7-10min on med high heat.
Toss this into the crockpot.
Cook on low all day. For me that is 8 hours or so.
Toss with about 14oz of pasta of your choice. To make more like eggplant parmesan , I added about 1/2cup cottage cheese and mixed around.
COver with 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese and 1/4-1/3cup grated parmesan cheese.
Bake for about 10-20min to melt the cheese on top. Enjoy with a side salad or some roasted veggies.
This can be made vegan by omitting the cheese 🙂
- 1 Eggplant, peeled and diced
- 3-4 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 5 cups fresh cherry tomatoes, blenderized (or 2 cans diced tomatoes)
- 5-6 cloves of garlic, blenderized in processor or finely minced (what I like garlic)
- ½-1cup onion, diced
- 2 Tbsp fresh Basil, minced
- 1 Tbsp Oregano, minced
- ½-1 Tbsp rosemary, minced
- 1 package of pasta of your choice (I used whole wheat spaghetti)
- ½ cup cottage cheese
- ½ cup mozzarella, grated
- ¼-1/3 cup parmesan cheese, grated
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Peel and dice eggplant into fairly large pieces. Cover with salt, (few generous pinches) and allow to sweat for 10-30min.
- Blenderized the tomatoes and the garlic.
- Add the tomatoes, vegetable broth and herbs to crockpot and combine
- Add eggplant and onion to large saucepan and saute in EVOO for about 7min/until tender. Add to crockpot.
- Cook all day on low (8ish hours on low or 4-6hours on high)
- Cook pasta according to package, al dente
- Combine sauce with pasta and cottage cheese
- Sprinkle Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese over top and cool for about 10 until melty
- Enjoy with side salad or roasted vegetable.
