gratin of eggplant, roasted peppers & garlic

filed under:
garlic eggplant roasted vegetables roasted garlic roasted red peppers

Delicious recipes are included in each issue of the South Anchorage Farmers' Market Newsletter, be sure to sign up!
subscribe to newsletter via rss • subscribe to recipes via rss • subscribe to newsletter via email
download the print-friendly version of this recipe

This recipe is another way to use the great eggplants that A&M Farms is bringing to the market from their greenhouse. Of course we can’t get local red peppers to roast, but we can make yummy fresh tomato sauce if we want, from the local tomatoes! Or you can just use a regular marinara sauce with canned tomatoes—either one will work just fine.

This dish is based on a recipe in Annie Somerville’s Fields of Greens, a book I’ve had for years, and still love dearly. A lot of the recipes can be quite time-consuming (this is one of them, I’ll admit), but the results have never failed me. I tend toward her less fussy recipes, and then am never disappointed.

There are several steps to this recipe, but you can do most of it ahead of time, when you have the oven on for something else. The eggplant and garlic can be roasted ahead of time (or use the garlic that you already have stored, from the olive oil infused with garlic recipe), and so can the red peppers.I thawed mine out from the freezer, where I’d stored them earlier. You can make the tomato sauce ahead of time, too—or maybe you already have some stored in the freezer, waiting for this opportunity to use it!

4 pounds eggplant, sliced ¾-inch thick
extra-virgin olive oil, (or olive oil infused with roasted garlic)
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped (if not using garlic oil)
sea salt or kosher salt
-------------
3 heads of garlic, unpeeled (or the equivalent in roasted/poached garlic from the olive oil infusing project)
3 red or yellow bell peppers, roasted, peeled, and cut into ½-inch slices (see recipe, below)
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried
freshly-ground pepper
Tomato Sauce (use either variation, below)

bread crumb topping

2 slices hearty bread (I prefer whole wheat sourdough)
2 medium shallots, minced (or substitute minced onion)

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Toss the eggplant in a large bowl with 3 tablespoons of the oil, garlic, and ½ teaspoon of the salt. The slices won’t really be evenly coated with oil—there will be splotches of oil here and there on some slices—but that’s OK. Just mix them around the best you can.
2. Cut the tops off the heads of garlic, drizzle them with a little oil, and wrap each one in a square of aluminum foil.
3. Line rimmed baking sheets with parchment, or spray them with cooking spray. Lay the eggplant slices in a single layer on the baking sheets and roast for 10 minutes. Rotate the pans and roast for 10 more minutes. Check for tenderness at this point—if you’re using Japanese eggplants, they may be done, but the bigger globe eggplants will take longer. Keep roasting them until they are soft and tender, rotating every 10 minutes or so. It took my eggplants a little more than 30 minutes, but just see what yours taste like.
4. Bake the garlic at the same time, removing from the oven when it is soft and squishy when you press on it, or when a paring knife will easily slip into a clove. Set the garlic and eggplant aside to cool.
5. Squish the garlic out of its skin and toss it with the roasted pepper strips and another tablespoon of olive oil, the herbs, and ¼ teaspoon of salt and some freshly-ground pepper. 
6. Pour about 2 cups of tomato sauce into the bottom of a 9x13-inch baking dish and layer the eggplant in rows across the width of the dish, overlapping the slices pretty steeply as you go. Continue to layer, packing the slices close together, until you’ve used all the eggplant. Tuck the pepper strips and garlic cloves in between the eggplant slices.
7. Bake for 25 minutes, or longer, until bubbling.
8. While it bakes, process bread in food processor until finely ground.  You should have about 1½ cups of crumbs. Combine bread crumbs, 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and shallots in a medium bowl. After 25 minutes, remove baking dish from the oven and sprinkle bread crumb mixture evenly on top of eggplant. Bake gratin until bubbling well around the edges, and the bread crumbs are nicely browned, 5 to 15 minutes (this will depend on whether your breadcrumbs are made with whole-wheat or white bread). Remove from the oven and let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.

roasted red peppers
1. Preheat your grill or broiler. Roast the red peppers, turning them as each side gets blackened.
2. When they are blackened all the way around, place them in a big bowl and cover it with a lid or a plate until the peppers are fairly cool (this steams and cooks the peppers the rest of the way).
3. Peel the skins from the peppers and remove the seeds, but don’t rinse the peppers—just rinse your fingers as you peel the skins off. Slice the peppers into pieces as desired.

fast fresh tomato sauté
This recipe is based on one from Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen.

3 cups of sliced, quartered, or diced tomatoes
1 shallot or ½ a small white onion, minced
1 large garlic clove, minced
small handful basil leaves, slivered, or 1 teaspoon thyme, minced (whatever fresh herbs you have hanging around, or growing in a pot on your deck—oregano, maybe?)
1 tablespoon olive oil
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
a drizzle of balsamic vinegar

1. Toss the tomatoes with the onion or shallot, garlic, herbs, olive oil, and a pinch of salt. You can let the mixture marinate for up to 2 hours or use it right away.
2. Just before you’re ready to eat, heat a skillet and when hot, add the tomatoes. Swirl the pan around to warm them through, add a few drops of balsamic vinegar and some pepper. They should just warm up and release their juices, not fall apart.

marinara sauce
This recipe will make more than you need for this recipe, but it’s so easy and yummy, you can make extra and freeze the leftover for next time you need tomato sauce. Or just make a half-batch!

4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
two 28 ounce cans whole tomatoes, or diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons dried oregano
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Coarsely chop the tomatoes if using whole ones.
2. Saute the garlic in the olive oil until fragrant (30 seconds or so). Add the tomatoes and cook the sauce until nicely thickened, about 30 minutes.
3. Crush the oregano between your palms as you sprinkle it into the pot. Stir to combine, and add salt and pepper to taste. If you want a smoother sauce, put some of the sauce into your blender, or use a hand-held immersion blender to puree some of the chunks out of the sauce.