Friday, December 4, 2009

It's Freezing In Texas So I'm Cooking Eggplant

It's freezing out there. So, I decided to fore go my regular icy swim and cook eggplant instead.

My Top Chef attempt this morning seems doomed to failure. When I was at Sprouts Farmers Market on Wednesday they had nice big purple eggplants for only 69 cents.

I remember long ago attempting to cook eggplant. I don't believe I followed a recipe. If I remember right the result was inedible.

This time I decided to follow a recipe. Recipes are really easy to find these days via the Internet. I usually do not use recipes because I don't like anyone telling me what to do. That and I usually don't have the right ingredients.

What you see in the picture is what resulted from sort of following a recipe, prior to the cooking process, which is going on right now.

The directions had me slicing the eggplants length-wise, them cutting 6 or 7 slits, almost all the way through. Then sticking slices of Parmesan cheese, thinly sliced Parmesan and garlic, plus chopped up parsley into the slits.

Well, that sounds easy, but those slits were not very willing to have all that stuff shoved in them. Luckily I had no parsley or I'd have had an even more difficult time stuffing those slits.

The resulting mess bakes for a half hour at 375, then I sprinkle a topping of more Parmesan mixed with seasoned bread crumbs and olive oil, and bake til brown. I had no seasoned bread crumbs, so I pulverized some whole wheat crackers in my Vita-Mix.

I'll take a picture of the final result if it doesn't go up in flames and show it to you later.