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Silky Perfection

I'm not sure why so many eggplant recipes begin with roasting the eggplant, but I'm certainly not going to argue with the resulting silky perfection!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Depending on the size of the eggplant, slice them lengthwise in halves or in quarters. Roll the eggplant in olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.

Cover your pan with aluminum foil and roast in the oven until the eggplant is completely soft - usually between 1-1/2 hours and 2 hours. Undercooked eggplant, to me, tastes like chalk. Yuck!

Once your eggplant is cooked, squeeze lemon over it, then scrape the meat from the skin.

This silky eggplant puree is the basis for so many Mediterranean recipes. I'll post some of my favorite recipes shortly.

Comments

  1. I normally roast the whole eggplant over the gas burner (prick with fork, then nearly burn the skin, remove, cover to let steam, peel later).

    In this oven method what purpose does the lemon juice serve?

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know, I'm not really sure what the lemon juice does. It'd be fine without it. I think it just adds another flavor-layer.

    ReplyDelete

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