Wild Things Farm

This year wasn’t a particularly “great” year for eggplants but there were a few harvested just before the first predicted frost. So, I have a bag of eggplants in the fridge–what do I do with them?

Last year, or maybe the year before (time gets away, doesn’t it?) I made eggplant “meat” balls with marinara sauce and spaghetti. They were totally edible and actually pretty good. So, I took the eggplant–the skinny Asian eggplants–peeled them and sliced them into about 1/4 inch slices or so, sprinkled them with salt and put them on a paper towel for about 20 minutes or so. This draws the moisture out of the eggplant. Then I pat them dry and roasted them for 20 minutes or so until they seemed kind of done.

At this point I put them in the food processor and processed them until they were ground up like, well, hamburger. I added garlic and some onion (I need to go to the grocery store so its flakes, okay?) Mixed this up with about 1/3 package of an 8 oz pack of cream cheese, about 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese, and 3 pieces of sun dried tomato that were chopped up. Oh, I also chopped up a jalapeno pepper that was laying on the counter, just for a little heat. Mix all that together and stuff it into the pepper. Oh yes, the pepper. As I was harvesting all the eggplants before the predicted frost, I harvested all the peppers as well. I had a couple of “Sweet Diablo” peppers which are just a sweet pepper that is about 5-6 inches long by 2 inches wide at the top and sweet, but not hot. I slit the pepper, removed the pith and seeds, and stuffed with this mixture. Then sprinkle with Panko bread crumbs and bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until they start to brown a little. Yum, yum!