julie’s kind kitchen

I have a love/hate relationship with eggplant. I’ve had some successes when cooking eggplant (VCON’s Roasted Eggplant & Spinach Muffalatta) and many failed attempts (Eggplant Parmesan x 10). I also have had way to many greasy eggplant sandwiches from chain restaurants. When I went to the farmer’s market yesterday (as I always do on Wednesdays), my local grower told me that eggplants would soon be replaced with squashes and sweet potatoes. Eeek! While I love squash and sweet potatoes, it was the scarcity of locally grown eggplant that made me want it. So I bought a good lookin’ medium sized one.

I was determined to search near and far for an easy, cheap and delicious recipe staring eggplant. I found some yummy looking recipes in VCON, but they we either too complicated than I was wanting or I didn’t have a lot of the ingredients. I turned to one of the cookbooks I just recently checked out of the library: Moosewood Restaurant New Classics. The recipe for Moroccan Roasted Vegetables quickly caught my eye! I then realized  I had all of the ingredients except sweet potato (hehe) and zucchini. I decided the recipe would probably be just as good without them, so I got cooking.

The result was a creamy, melt in you mouth eggplant that was beyond flavorful with the spice blend of cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, paprika and cayenne. I served the veg (and a handful of chickpeas) over couscous as suggested in the recipe and topped everything with toasted almonds. I just wish I had raisins-that would have put it over the top!

So eggplant haters, haterz, h8rz…whatever you call yourself, try this recipe and kiss and make-up with that purdy purple vegetable called eggplant.