Bento #147 – Eggplant sugo

The bottom layer (foreground) contains boiled Einkorn with eggplant sugo, fried eggplant strips, parmesan and feta cheese.

The top layer contains a Greek salad with crisp lettuce, cherry tomatoes, salad onions, feta, sundried tomatoes and herbs, and a fishy of dressing for it.

Simple and delicious… mmm.

The BF gets the same but with leftover pasta. We had the pasta for dinner but instead of splitting the remains I decided to boil some Einkorn for myself – the grain tastes delicious and I was feeling like some change. Plus it packs better than pasta, which doesn’t matter in the big boy box but matters a lot in the Totoro bowls…

I had a major craving for vegetarian sugo yesterday and needed to satisfy it. There are lots of veggie sugo recipes but as the BF doesn’t like the flavour of boiled carrots, and I’m not too fond of soy “meat replacement” we have to work around that. One of my favourites is baked eggplant – I love eggplant!

Eggplant sugo
2-3 portions
1 large eggplant
300 ml crushed or puréed tomatos
1/2 red onion
1 clove of garlic
1 Tsp. olive oil
Salt, pepper, herbs (I used rosemary and some oregano).

This recipe is pretty light due to not frying, but baking most of the eggplant. It reduces the need for oil a LOT!

Wash the eggplant. Cut off about 1/3 lengthwise and cut it into thin strips for the decoration. Salt the strips and put them aside.
Cut the rest into rough chunks – they don’t need to be fine but should be even enough to bake at the same time. Salt the chunks and put them on a grill in the oven at about 250 degrees C. It should take about 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the chunks, so plan accordingly – I had ovenbaked eggplant before so I had a rough idea of how long it would take. You can also spray the chunks with some oil but it’s not really necessary.

While they bake, cut the onion and garlic thinly. Fry the eggplant strips in batches in a pan. I usually just spray the pan with oil but eggplant soaks up a lot, so re-spray whenever necessary…
Put the strips on a plate to drain and continue with frying the onion and garlic in the same pan. Add the crushed tomatoes (salt, pepper, herb and sugar to taste) and cook for a bit.

Test if the eggplant chunks are soft yet. When they are soft, they should be cooked well enough to be crushed with just a fork. I used the food processor anyway, because I’m a lazy bastard and didn’t want to deal with the peel or the baked surfaces :) Anyway, process them with the tech of your choice and put them into the tomato sauce which should by now be merrily bubbling away and ruining your freshly cleaned stove. Cook a little longer and add some reduced tomato paste if it’s not thick enough yet.

Serve with pasta (I assume you found some time during this to time your pasta juuust right…), the fried strips as decoration, and crumbled feta or parmesan cheese (optional if you want to keep it vegan).
Enjoy!