Stuffed Eggplant with Red Pepper Purée

I made Stuffed Eggplant with Red Pepper Purée last night. It was such a great meal!  At one point the whole stove was going: cooking quinoa, steaming red bell pepper, sauteing onion and mushroom, and boiling potatoes for mashed potatoes!


I began by making the red pepper purée. A whole red pepper was cut into chunks and steamed on the stove. After it softened, I pureéd it in the blender and sent it through a sieve. The remaining smoothed out purée was stirred up with garlic, salt, pepper, and a dash of sugar.

Onto the eggplant!  This was a bit of a process, but totally worth it in the end. There were two choices for how to stuff the eggplant: Mediterranean Style or 1970s Alternative Lifestyle-Style. I chose the latter, not only for the awesome name, but also because it sounded so delicious! 


I began by cutting an eggplant in half, hollowing it out, and mincing up the insides. Onion, garlic, mushrooms, and minced eggplant cooked down on the stove with oregano, basil, and thyme. It made the whole kitchen smell so good ... something about cooking mushroom takes me back to my childhood. I loved scented moments that do that.

While this cooked, I made the quinoa. The real recipe calls for brown rice; oops ... I didn't have any. But I had quinoa!  And I have been trying for months to get Charlie into it, so this was the perfect chance to sneak it in. I cooked the quinoa in vegetable stock instead of water, which I think really made a difference, flavor-wise.


After everything cooked on the stove, the onion mixture and quinoa got mixed up in a bowl with a spoonful or two of cottage cheese, grated cheddar cheese, and some sesame seeds.  I spooned the mixture into the eggplants and sprinkled some paprika on top.  These bad boys were ready to bake in the oven!

They came out perfectly crispy on the outside.

I drizzled some red pepper purée over each.

YUM!  This whole dinner was a huge success.  I love the flavors in the stuffed eggplant and the red pepper purée was the perfect sauce to accompany it. Charlie even enjoyed the quinoa!  Win!

Scheherazade Casserole

I apologize for my lack of updates recently ... school is swallowing me whole with the homework and the typing and the headaches and the mechanical pencils.  Thankfully, tomorrow is the last day of summer quarter! I will be back to my regular bloggity bloggin' schedule with lots of delicious Moosewood dishes to share!  I am very excited!

Today, as a distraction from a giant social studies unit I am putting together, I made Scheherazade Casserole. I have no idea how to pronounce this casserole, but I do know how to eat it: in a bowl, with a spoon!  I made a few adjustments because I didn't have any bulgur AND I got the wrong kind of soybeans, but this recipe still turned out delicious.  Like, lick the serving spoon delicious.

Instead of using the aforementioned bulgur, I substituted quinoa. I think this worked well, considering that both are grains and fairly chewy.

Quinoa is so rad. I need to eat it more often. I also need to convert Charlie into a quinoa eater. But I digress ....

I don't have any photos of the process, but here's what happened: I cooked onion and red bell pepper on the stove with salt, cumin, basil, cayenne, and black pepper. This was a highly seasoned dish and you can make it very spicy with the cayenne! I cooked soybeans (I used edamame ... it was great!) in a separate pot. In a large bowl I combined the cooked quinoa, edamame, seasoned onion/bell pepper mixture, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and feta cheese. Everything smelled so spicy and tomatoey!  Ohhh baby!  I sprinkled the tops with a little more feta and baked the casseroles in the oven.  They came out golden and bubbly and scented my apartment wildly.

I served the casserole hot with some super delicious gala apple slices. The tomato paste added a great deal of flavor to the dish and the cayenne made it perfectly spicy. A high protein, high flavor dish I look forward to making again!