Stuffed Eggplant With Grape Tomatoes

I love vegetables that can be stuffed so to continue on my thoughts from yesterday I wanted to talk about eggplant. I did not eat much eggplant growing up but as a grown up I eat a lot of eggplant! I like eggplant parmigiana, lasagna, Thai, Chinese and the many other ways to cook eggplant. Here is just one of my variations of:

Stuffed Eggplant

1 Large Eggplant
1 Pint of multi colored grape tomatoes halved (cherry work too)
1 Med yellow onion (chopped small)
1 clove of garlic (mashed)
1/2 Cup of Mozzarella (shredded or cubed)
1/4 Cup of Parmesan (shredded or grated)
1 Tbsp of Basil (fresh) chiffonade
1 tsp of Oregano
1 tsp lemon thyme (regular works too)
1/2 Tbsp of EVOO
Salt to sweat eggplant


Cut your eggplant in half lengthwise, scrape seeds and some out with a spoon to make a bowl.
Lightly salt the eggplants and put the scooped part in a colander also lightly salting to sweat out any bitterness. Let stand for 20-30 min and parboil your eggplant halves for 6 minutes, rinse scraped part with cold water, pat dry and chop the pieces into bite size pieces.
Oil a pan and add onions, sweat out then add garlic, tomatoes, eggplant pieces, oregano, thyme cook until it is mixed at starting to brown. Toss in basil and mozzarella, now fill each eggplant half
with mixture and sprinkle with Parmesan. Place on a oiled cookie sheet with your left over evoo.
Bake at 375 until cheese looks brown and melted apx 25-35 min.

This is great as a side dish or a meal for two served with a simple micro greens salad w/balsamic reduction dressing**.

** Dressing:
1/4 Cup of balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp of raw sugar

cook down (medium heat) till it is 1/2 the liquid and is very thick

Now mix with a little evoo

will store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks