Vegan Stuffed Eggplant (7 October 2015)

This time I prepared beautiful round eggplants. I saw them for the first time at the restaurant Au Vin when chef Patrick received them in a box. He briefly explained how he is preparing those purple beauties and since then I have been searching after them.

There are a number of different varieties of eggplants. In Europe I used to buy deep purple large oval once called “Black Bell”. In Brazil you can find many different types of eggplants, some are as small as a table tennis ball, others are long, slim with light purple color. They are mostly used in Asian cooking as they have thin skin, are less bitter and much sweeter. 

Vegan Stuffed Eggplant​

6 servings

3 roasted eggplants
2 medium-sized tomatoes chopped fine
1 red onion, chopped
2 tbsps canola cooking oil
2 cloves garlic chopped very fine
2 tbsps finely chopped fresh green coriander
salt and pepper to taste

Roast the eggplants in the oven at 220 C for around 1h or until they are quite soft and starting to collapse.

Cut the eggplants in half and remove out the center, leaving enough meat inside the skin so that it holds its shape.

Prepare the filling
Heat the canola oil in a medium-size nonstick skillet. Add the chopped garlic and chopped center of eggplants. Fry them around 5 minutes. Season the filling with salt and pepper.

Once the filling is cold, add the tomatoes, the chopped red onion, the chopped fresh coriander and mix well. Season with salt and pepper.

The filling is then stuffed back into the shells. Decorate with fresh coriander and sprinkle some oil of olives.