Stuffed Eggplant

Here is yet another recipe of my own creation designed to clean out my fridge. I am doing great though, and have almost used all of the leftover produce, cheese and other accoutrement's that I had. So hopefully, I can get back to making other fun stuff in the next couple of days.

This is also our fourth vegetarian meal in row! Not bad considering hubby is an avid meat eater. I wanted to stuff my eggplants with rice, but all of the recipes I could find used some sort of mince, or had indian spices...that is, they were stuffed with a pilaf. This would be fine, but I didn't think that would allow me to use my tomatoes, herbs and mozzarella. So, I devised this recipe after looking through tons of others. Again, I'm not going to write it out carefully, as I threw in whatever I had and didn't measure anything. Feel free to omit or add anything you like.

I had 2 small white eggplants, which I pierced and then boiled for about 20 minutes. I then cut them in half and scooped out the middle flesh. In the mean time I cooked some basmati rice, about 1/4 to 1/2 cup and sauteed some onions, garlic and some peachy momma hot peppers. I then added the onion mixture to the rice, then added some lemon juice, chopped heirloom tomatoes, bread crumbs, an egg, grated Parmesan cheese, pine nuts and some fresh herbs (thyme, oregano and basil). The eggplant halves were then stuffed with the rice mixture, placed in a baking dish and covered with pasta sauce (I used jar marinara/napolitana), but you could use fresh. I just wanted to use up what I had), some slices of fresh mozzarella and a bit more grated Parmesan cheese. Baked for about 20-25 minutes at 375F, then served with arugula dressed with lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper.

Really tasty. Even better than I expected. I think this is quite a good vegetarian recipe and you could use the stuffing for anything. I had some left over and used it to stuff a tomato, but you could also do a pepper or a squash.