Grilled eggplant with sundried tomatoes and pecan goat cheese

This is actually so easy to make that I shouldn’t even be posting it. But I can’t help myself. It looks nice and tastes soo good. Besides, with the abundance of homegrown goods and the lack of time to cook lately, this is a perfect fast food without renouncing great taste.

Whether using nuts, walnuts or pecans, it’s really important to oven roast the nuts for couple of minutes. This will give them an amazing crunchy texture and will enhance the nutty flavor which works really nice with goat cheese.

Ingredients:

• 1 eggplant
• 150 g of soft fresh goat cheese
• 1 Tbsp of spreadable goat cheese or mascarpone
• handful of pecans
• sundried tomatoes
• fresh thyme
• extra virgin olive oil

Preparation:

1. Get the cheese out of the fridge at least 30 mins prior to mixing. Oven roast pecan nuts for couple of minutes. Let cool, roughly chop and mix with both cheeses.
2. Cut eggplant in 1 cm slices and grill in a pan. Use little oil and cook covered on both sides. There’s no need to fry them in oil.
3. Assemble eggplant slices and goat cheese, top with sun dried tomatoes, thyme and good amount of high quality olive oil.

Grilled aubergine spinach salad

There’s nothing better than picking up fresh veggies that have grown in your own garden. My mum’s garden is just marvelous. And guess what, this is the first year we’ve succeeded in growing aubergines. And spinach too, comes from the garden.

With products like this you should keep it simple. Toss some olive oil over aubergines and grill. If you’re using a pan, there’s a trick. Aubergines are actually like a sponge and require quite a lot of oil. So, instead of soaking them in fat, frying and loosing all the flavors, you can use just about a tablespoon of olive oil and cover the pan while cooking on medium heat. This will allow to cook on the inside. Also very important, seasoning with some salt while cooking will allow to release excess water. After a couple of minutes remove the cover and give them the finishing grill. Set aside, cover and let cool. This will give the aubergines a silky texture without loosing the flavors.

Ingredients:

• baby spinach leaves
• aubergine
• goat cheese
• roasted nuts
• thyme
• olive oil for cooking
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt, pepper
• pita bread (optional)

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven at 200ºc. Roast nuts until they get lightly brown. When cooled crush in a mortar or roughly chop.
2. Toss some olive oil over aubergines and grill. If using a pan, heat one tablespoon of olive oil and follow instructions above.
3. When aubergines chilled, assemble salad: fresh spinach leaves and grilled aubergines, topped with goat cheese, sprinkled with roasted nuts and fresh thyme and a good amount of high quality olive oil.
4. Serve with grilled pita bread.