Eggplant Fever

Beautiful and delicious!

One of the great things about belonging to a CSA is the fact we get fresh, in season produce every week.  I never did get our own vegetable garden in this spring so shopping at roadside produce stands and the CSA is how I've been buying the majority of our vegetables this summer.   The CSA had a bumper crop of eggplants, tomatoes, and various peppers, so I decided to find some new interesting applications for our harvest.

Fire roasted goodness!

I am the first to admit for some strange reason I do not like raw tomatoes unless they are in salsa or a BLT.  I had close to a dozen tomatoes and I really didn't want them to go to waste.  A week prior I had made Jamie Oliver's Pot Roast Meatloaf and used a couple cans fire roasted tomatoes from Trader Joe's.  Why couldn't I make my own?  After a little trial and error (the grates on my burners were a little bigger than the tomatoes, so I had to hold them with the tongs) and a resting period in a covered bowl I had my very own beautiful tomatoes.  Now what to do with the eggplant...

I wanted to do something a little more interesting than grilled eggplant or Eggplant Parmesan, so I looked through my pantry to see what  possible ingredients I could find.  I had a couple cans of garbanzo beans, some onions, and some vegetable stock.  Why not make a soup or stew?   After a bit of google-fu, I found two similar recipes that I decided to combine.  Here's the result (although not exact, I did take some liberties with the amounts.)

Spicy Chickpea Stew

• 1 eggplant, chopped into 1" cubes
• 12 oz. chorizo (if you want to make a vegetarian version Trader Joe's makes a yummy soy chorizo)
• 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2  stalks of celery, chopped
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes with liquid (I actually had a bunch of tomatoes from our CSA so I fire roasted them and chopped them up)
• 2 cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) drained and rinsed ( actually doubled this amount in my batch)
• 2 tbs. of olive oil + a dash of it for later
• 4 cups of broth (I used vegetable broth but you can use chicken broth instead)
• 1 tsp. of cumin
• salt & pepper to taste

1. Add 2 tbs of olive oil to pot. Saute chorizo in pot, then add onion, garlic, and celery.  Let cook down for 5 minutes (be careful not to brown onion.) 
2. Add eggplant and stir well.  Let simmer for 15 minutes.
3. Add chickpeas, tomatoes, and broth to pot.  Stir well, let simmer for 30 minutes.
4. Drizzle with some olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.

You can use an immersion blender to puree some of the stew if you'd like.  You can also add some sliced prosciutto after you remove from heat.

As delicious as it looks!

I have to say now that I've got my energy back (despite averaging 4-5 hours of sleep a night) I have really missed cooking and experimenting in the kitchen.  I think my next adventure will be to further explore the world of eggplant and perhaps even fire roast the peppers and make some chili, especially since the weather in the Magical Mitten is headed to Autumn territory faster every day.