Becky: ICBC Eggplant

Sicilian Grilled Eggplant
This recipe was taken from the George Foreman the Next Grilleration Great Grilling Recipes

1 medium-sized eggplant
1 t. black pepper
1/2 t. salt
8 oz. can tomato sauce
1/2 c. fresh ripe tomato, diced
1 T. fresh garlic, minced
1 T. fresh parsley, minced
1/2 t. salt
1 t. black pepper
2 T. Asiago cheese, shredded

Clean, peel and cut the eggplant into 1/2-inch thick slices. Arrange the eggplant slices on a double-thickness of paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Let stand 10 minutes. Rinse the salt away and pat dry. Sprinkle each slice with pepper.
In a small saucepan, combine the tomato sauce, tomato, garlic, parsley, pepper and salt. Heat through and simmer for 10 minutes. Keep warm.
Set the Temperature to 350F to allow the grill to preheat. Place the eggplant slices in the grill in a single layer and set the Timer to 8 minutes. When the Timer beeps, check the eggplant with the tip of a knife. It should be tender when done.
Place on a large serving platter and grill any remaining slices as directed above. When all the eggplant slices are grilled, gently pour the tomato sauce over the slices and top with the shredded cheese. Serves 4.


First of all, my computer is not letting me attach my pic to this message. Boo! I have been having problems with my computer lately because of a virus, so I'll try again whenever I can get a chance to use another computer.
To be totally honest, I was not a fan of this recipe for one reason: way too much pepper! When making the sauce, I used the whole teaspoon of pepper that the recipe called for, but when I was sprinkling the extra pepper on the eggplant slices, even just 1/2 of a teaspoon seemed like too much to me, so I only used the half. All that pepper made the slices pretty difficult to eat, to be honest. I was done after about 2, and they left me craving something sweet. I was also planning on giving some of this to my daughter for lunch, but it would've been too spicy for her. I thought that it was a little odd that the recipe called for so much pepper. It's probably all in preference though. I'm sure some people like a lot of pepper in their food, but not me. If I ever make this again I'll probably just use 1/4 to 1/2 of a teaspoon in the sauce while just sprinkling 1/4 of a teaspoon on the slices. Another possibility as to why I didn't much care for this recipe could've been because of the whole tablespoon of garlic. Although I love garlic, a whole tablespoon just seems like a lot for just 4 servings worth of sauce. Usually I measure 1/8 of a teaspoon per clove, so that's 24 cloves of garlic! At least I don't have to worry about any vampires in my kitchen lol. I still think it was the pepper that was the main problem here.
I did a couple other things differently as well. For one thing, I used a teaspoon of dried parsley instead of the tablespoon of fresh because I had forgotten that I had no freeze-dried parsley left, which I always use for fresh. I really don't think it made that much of a difference. I also bought a wedge of asiago cheese since you can't buy it shredded, and I cut little pieces to put on each slice instead, and that worked fine as well. As I said before though, I was a little disappointed in this recipe. I have a bunch of slices left over but I probably won't eat all of them. Hope everyone else enjoyed their recipes a little more than I did this week!

Correction: I just read on my jar of minced garlic that 1 clove equals 1/2 a teaspoon, so I was a little off. Someone once told me that 1 clove equals about an 1/8 of a teaspoon and I never thought to double-check until now. Good to know! However, 6 cloves of garlic for 4 servings still seems like an awful lot to me.