We have a bumper harvest of eggplants and I'm running out of ideas of what to do with them. We have tried:
- Baba Ganoush
- Eggplant jerky
Both have been successful, but I'm looking for other ideas. Any experience?
I used olive oil, balsamico, paprika and salt to marinate the eggplants for the jerky. It tasted good, but it was a little to oily. So I had to remove the oil while dehydrating. I think I'm going to try teriyaki sauce for the marinate next. Any experience with marinating eggplants?
Claudia Roden’s classic, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, has an outstanding Lebanese stuffed eggplant pickle recipe called, Betingan Makdous that I really like. The basic idea is to poach 3-4 inch eggplants in salted water then press out the bitter juices with a heavy lid or other weight. After flattening, cut a pocket in the pressed eggplant then stuff with a mix of walnuts, chili and garlic. Put these stuffed little eggplants in a jar then cover in olive oil to preserve. The cookbook is tremendous and worth buying for all the amazing veg recipes.
I couldn’t find Roden's recipe on line but this one by author "Samira" has nice instructions and seems very similar with 2 differences that may impact shelf-life:
Samira, uses more chili per cup of walnuts and she salts the eggplants after poaching (mored salt could allow longer shelf life in Samira's recipe):
https://www.alphafoodie.com/simple-stuffed-makdous-recipe-cured-eggplant/ Roden says that these little eggplants keep on month in the refrigerator. Samira, says that hers keep for a year.
Such a unusual (for me) and delicious appetizer!
We have (had!) a lot of asian eggplants to preserve. Also cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, zucchini, basil and mushrooms.
At first I thought I'd make a big pot of ratatouille and then pressure-can it all. It would have come to 12 pints. What a palaver! What a mess!
Then I checked out how to dehydrate all the ingredients. Asian eggplants they recommend blanching whole before slicing 1/4" thick. Tomatoes I cut in half and dry cut-side up.
Made short work of thin-slicing the zucchini with a mandolin. Mushrooms, sliced. garlic, peppers & onions chopped coarsely.
Laid out each ingredient on a separate tray of the dehydrator at 125 degrees F. The tomatoes took the longest. As each ingredient was dried, put it in a separate pint jar.
But then when it was all done, layered the dried ingredients in pint jars. Only 4 pints, and a lot less mess than pressure-canning!
Considering reconstituting as a test right away -- thinking I should pour boiling water over them in a bowl so they just plump up, drain the excess water & save, then sautee the whole lot in olive oil, adding the excess water as needed.
Would do it, but we have a few tubs of ratatouille from vege harvested earlier in the season, in the freezer!!
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