For some reason I used to be intimidated by eggplants, didn't know what exactly to do with them. But that has fortunately changed. This is one of my favorite recipe. Originally by Attila Hildmann from his Vegan for Fit book, it's a nice low carb recipe... unless you eat it with potatoes like I do! I made this as a lunch that I took to work for a friend and me: Tuesday is homecooked work lunch day - although we even have a vegan section in our university canteen! (So progressive!) I made baked potatoes and herb cream cheese/Quark [Recipe!] to go with the egg plant.
Ingredients:
for two meals:
- 2 eggplants
- a few tablespoons of olive oil
- 8 dried tomatoes (in oil)
- 2 onions
- 1 clove of garlic
- 100g of tomato paste
- 180g of precooked kidney beans (canned)
- salt
- 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
- 2 teaspoons of oregano
- 1 tea spoon of agave syrup
For the cream on top:
- 60g of almond butter (almond butter is fairly pricey. Unseasoned cashew or peanut butter works, too!)
- some water
- 50g of tomato paste
- salt
Instructions:
- Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise.
- Leaving 5mm (1/5 inch) of eggplant on each side, scrape out the eggplant and chop it up finely.
- Mix 2 tablespoons of olive oil with salt in a small bowl and brush the eggplant halves with it.
- Place the eggplant halves on a baking tray.
- Bake the eggplant halves at 200°C/390°F for 15 minutes.
- While the eggplants are baking, chop up onions, garlic and tomatoes into fine piecs.
- Fry the onions and garlic with a bit of olive oil in a pan for two minutes.
- Add the dried tomateos, cumin, and oregano and fry for another five minutes.
- Add tomate paste and beans and mix well.
- Mix almond butter with the tomato paste and a few tablespoons of water.
- Season with salt.
- Mix well.
- Once the 15 minutes of the eggplant halves in the oven are up, take them out of the oven.
- Fill the eggplant halves with the bean/tomato/onion... mixture.
- Top the filled eggplants with the almond butter/tomato cream.
- Bake the filled eggplants for 5-8 minutes at 250°C/480°F.
- Servce just like that or with baked potatoes and a herb cream [Recipe].
- Enjoy!
