A mother-daughter conversation on food and cooking (mostly)

Friday, August 15, 2008

Frustrating Marinated Eggplant


I'd like a better marinated eggplant recipe, please. This one called for minced garlic, fresh basil, salt, and wine vinegar layered with fried eggplant slices. I brushed eggplant chunks with olive oil and roasted them instead, but otherwise followed the recipe, and I wasn't thrilled. It should have improved over several days but was actually best on day 1. After that, the basil was ugly and brown and the garlic oddly sharp. Suggestions are welcome.

4 comments:

Kris said...

I have NEVER had good marinated eggplant. The only related way I like it is sliced very thinly, brushed with oil and grilled or broiled, then just sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and served at room temperature. Chopped herbs, of course.

Thick slices of eggplant have not worked for me thus far.

My eggplant salads, which I love, have roasted cubes in a dressing (see post on12/21/07).

Kris said...

The chef at Tavolino must feel the same way about eggplant slices: Nancy took us there for dinner on Wednesday, and we ordered the eggplant appetizer. It was a mousse kinda thing of eggplant and smoked salmon, sliced and piled up to LOOK like sliced eggplant. I didn't get the full cleverness of that until reading your post.

It was good, but smoked salmon tends to stand out against other flavors in a rather pushy way.

Eva said...

Yes, I've been meaning to make that salad. It put roasted eggplant chunks in pasta a lot -- they're good with pesto. We have so many, though, that I wanted to try a marinated version. Good to know that my experience wasn't isolated.

By the way, the eggplant in the picture with this post are actually very narrow, Japanese style -- there's no scale in the shot, I guess. They're nearly life size on my monitor, about 1-2" wide.

I wonder if lemon juice, thin lemon slices, olive oil, salt, and mint would make for a better marinade? I might try. We certainly have eggplant to spare.

Anonymous said...

How interesting mother and daughter talk like friends! hehe..