Iron Chef: Eggplant!!!

This is Shorty again with another exciting installment of IRON CHEF: SCRUMDELIOCIOUS!!!

So while Peanut ended up with Iron Chef tomato (a fruit he despises) for his challenge this week, I not only ended up with Iron Chef also (thanks to Food Network's Sunday night Iron Chef-A-Thon), but of all ingredients to use...I get EGGPLANT!!!  Now...it's not that I hate eggplant, because that's completely untrue.  But what are the chances that I would chose that as my secret ingredient, only days after cooking eggplant parmesean on a complete whim?!  Now what do I do?!?!?  Not only that..I had to go to three different grocery stores to find the stupid vegetable!

Ugh...but enough ranting...on to cooking...



I wanted to make something simple this week.  The challengers on the Iron Chef episode (Shook/Detolo VS Cat Cora) wrapped a piece of cod in thinly sliced eggplant and cooked it under the salamander.  Not very exciting, but it sounded simple and delicious.  Plus, as luck would have it, I had recently purchased a bag of frozen tilapia so the decision was made.

I began by carefully slicing the eggplant as thinly as possible.  Now I know you're wondering, "Why not just use your mandolin, Shorty?" and the reason is: our mandolin doesn't slice very thin.  It's great for potatoes au gratin and what have you, but there's no way to adjust the thickness.  So, on with the knife.  I think I did a pretty good job, all things considered!

Next, I wrapped the tilapia loins in the eggplant, drizzled them with olive oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper. 

After about 15 minutes under our less than impressive broiler, they were ready to eat!  All in all, it ended up being a rather boring dish, but even still it was pretty yummy.

Now, while I was going for simple and easy this week, I couldn't stop with eggplant-wrapped fish; that's a cop-out.  So I decided to get some help from your friend and mine, Pioneer Woman.  Her recipe for baba ganoush was just begging to be made, so here's a quick run down of how that went:

Roast the eggplant under your broiler for 30-45 minutes, turning occasionally to get all sides--you know it's done roasting when you can hardly turn the eggplant anymore for fear of it falling apart on you.

Once cool enough to handle, scoop the innards into a bowl, and add the following: garlic, lemon juice, tahini, parsley, and kosher salt.  There are exact measurements, but I really just eyeballed everything.  And, we didn't have lemon juice, so we subbed with orange juice (and it still turned out pretty dang good!).

Now mix...and eat with whatever you can dip in it.

That's what I call a great meal that showcases eggplant!