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| Eggplant Caviar |
Summer in the Palm Springs area is long and hot with temperatures over 100 + degrees for approximately 120 days each year. So chilled soups, salads and seafood dishes are de rigeur on the local menus. But one tires of the same old fare and I am always looking for something new, fast and easy to prepare. Recently I found just such a dish.
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| Fresh Ingredients at the ready |
French Fridays with Dorie features a new recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook Around My French Table. This week’s featured recipe is Eggplant Caviar. No real or faux caviar is involved, just wonderfully fresh, light and refreshing ingredients. Roasted eggplant is the platform for a dish that is accentuated with fresh cilantro, basil, thyme, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil , salt, pepper and cayenne.
This is a no fuss – no muss dish whose summertime benefit is that you can start it, spend 45 minutes relaxing by the pool, and come in and finish it off in minutes. There is so little preparation work needed that even the most challenged significant other should be able to help.
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| Poking the eggplant with fork |
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| Eggplant after roasting in over for 45 minutes |
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| Fresh lemon zest & juice, with a little black garlic |
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| Fresh basil, cilantro, thyme, onion and tomato |
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| Removing roasted eggplant from shell |
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| Mixing eggplant with fork to desired texture |
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| The good stuff – fresh and full of zest |
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| Ready for pita chips, veggies or bread – maybe even a little pasta |
Sante!
Glad this wsa a hit for you. It certainly made for a nice, light summer treat.
It is a nice dish for those warm days! Here in England where we dont have an A/C, I love the dishes where I dont have to cook for long or run the oven at too high a temperature for long!
Your fresh ingredients look so pretty against the poor eggplant (and I like eggplant 🙂 I am especially intrigued with the “black garlic”. I’ve never even heard of that but will be tracking it down myself. Great step by step photos – wish I had time to read this before trying it in the kitchen myself. I used dried spices and while the flavor was nice, they didn’t help with the color too much…..
Nice process photos! I’ve never seen black garlic before. This was a perfect summer recipe.
I like your process photos! The pasta idea is interesting.
Glad that you like it. I love it too. I made sopes and topped it with Dorie’s ‘ caviar’…thumbs up!
Here in the tropics, we have warm days all year round, so this caviar is the perfect appetizer or accompaniment to a dish anytime. That black garlic must’ve added some extra dimension to this recipe, we never get that type of garlic here. Like the look of your lemon zest, that’s the way I did my lime zest too :-).
Despite the heat, I’ve been making a lot of things in the oven and on the stove. This was a nice break. Have never seen the black garlic before!