This weekend I hosted company who freakin’ loves some eggplant – the food not the emoji. So, I found the most wonderful looking recipe I could find and readied myself to making a delicious main dish for Saturday night dinner. Naturally, I leaned on Ina Garten’s Eggplant Gratin. Now Ina’s recipes are so foolproof that I trust them enough to serve company without first test driving. HUGE, eggplant shaped mistake.
The recipe calls for pan frying some eggplant. Well, turns out these are just giant sponges that drank up tons of expensive olive oil. Boo. They looked gross and oiled up my countertops really aggressively. So, on a Friday night, I found myself calling the local market to ask, “if they might have any eggplant……..in their produce section?” Ummmm they did not. But, they did enjoy my seemingly prank call. It was not. Off to the market in search of MORE eggplant.
I mean, ewwwwwwwww.
I was rather peeved to waste such money just to throw it out. So I didn’t. I drained the suckers the best I could and set out to make a dip with them. I didn’t have all the tomato-y bits for caponata, so I just invited something.
Eggplant Emoji Dip
- Eggplant you might throw away, approximately 1-2 eggplants
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Juice of 2 lemons
- Olive Oil
- Red pepper flakes
- Process these ugly-ass eggplant with 2 cloves of garlic, some more olive oil, and the juice of two lemons.
- Garnish with another drizzle of olive oil, minced dried garlic, and red pepper flakes so it doesn’t look totally like poo.
Voila, a really, delicious, bright chunky dip. It’s not the prettiest thing I ever made, but it was gobbled right up by the aubergine monster.
Macarons and Mayhem 