Baked Aegean Style Eggplant With Lentils
- Ready In:
- 1hr
- Ingredients:
- 15
- Serves:
-
6
ingredients
- 2 (15 ounce) cans of your favorite firm lentils
- 1 cup halved and thinly sliced yellow sweet onion (1 small onion)
- 2 medium Japanese eggplants, in 1/2-inch slices (I prefer the thinner-skinned Japanese variety) or 1 medium globe eggplant, halved and in 1/2-inch slices (I prefer the thinner-skinned Japanese variety)
- 6 garlic cloves, minced (2 Tbsp)
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh basil
- 1 1⁄2 tablespoons drained capers
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika (use good quality paprika!)
- salt
- freshly ground tricolor pepper, amount to your preference (you can use black pepper if you don't have tricolor)
- 6 ounces swiss chard leaves, and stems (about 8 leaves and stems, and more to taste if desired)
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 3 drops balsamic vinegar, to taste
- crumbled feta cheese, for garnish
directions
- Prepare your ingredients: 1) rinse and drain the lentils, 2) halve and thinly slice the onion, 3) wash and slice the eggplant, 4) mince the garlic, 5) chop the parsley and basil, and 6) separate Swiss chard leaves from stems and chop them separately. Now you’re ready to put together the dish.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Get a 3.5 to 4 quart dutch oven and generously coat it with cooking spray or misted olive oil.
- Spread the lentils evenly over the bottom of the dutch oven, then top with the sliced onion and eggplant. Evenly top that with the minced garlic, parsley, basil, capers, and paprika. Season to your preference with salt and tricolor pepper (black is okay, too, but tricolor is better).
- In a small bowl, mix together the lemon juice and vinegars. Add a Swiss chard stem layer to the pot and sprinkle it with the vinegar mixture. Pack the chopped Swiss chard leaves as the final layer on top, then season once more with a bit of salt and pepper.
- Cover and bake in 350 degree F oven for 45 minutes. (Original recipe adds: “…or about 3 minutes after aroma wafts from oven.”).
- Garnish with a little crumbled feta, serve with rice pilaf, and enjoy!
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
Julesong
Tukwila, 87
<p>It's simply this: I love to cook! :) <br /><br />I've been hanging out on the internet since the early days and have collected loads of recipes. I've tried to keep the best of them (and often the more unusual) and look forward to sharing them with you, here. <br /><br />I am proud to say that I have several family members who are also on RecipeZaar! <br /><br />My husband, here as <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/39857>Steingrim</a>, is an excellent cook. He rarely uses recipes, though, so often after he's made dinner I sit down at the computer and talk him through how he made the dishes so that I can get it down on paper. Some of these recipes are in his account, some of them in mine - he rarely uses his account, though, so we'll probably usually post them to mine in the future. <br /><br />My sister <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/65957>Cathy is here as cxstitcher</a> and <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/62727>my mom is Juliesmom</a> - say hi to them, eh? <br /><br />Our <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/379862>friend Darrell is here as Uncle Dobo</a>, too! I've been typing in his recipes for him and entering them on R'Zaar. We're hoping that his sisters will soon show up with their own accounts, as well. :) <br /><br />I collect cookbooks (to slow myself down I've limited myself to purchasing them at thrift stores, although I occasionally buy an especially good one at full price), and - yes, I admit it - I love FoodTV. My favorite chefs on the Food Network are Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Mario Batali, and Giada De Laurentiis. I'm not fond over fakey, over-enthusiastic performance chefs... Emeril drives me up the wall. I appreciate honesty. Of non-celebrity chefs, I've gotta say that that the greatest influences on my cooking have been my mother, Julia Child, and my cooking instructor Chef Gabriel Claycamp at Seattle's Culinary Communion. <br /><br />In the last couple of years I've been typing up all the recipes my grandparents and my mother collected over the years, and am posting them here. Some of them are quite nostalgic and are higher in fat and processed ingredients than recipes I normally collect, but it's really neat to see the different kinds of foods they were interested in... to see them either typewritten oh-so-carefully by my grandfather, in my grandmother's spidery handwriting, or - in some cases - written by my mother years ago in fountain pen ink. It's like time travel. <br /><br />Cooking peeve: food/cooking snobbery. <br /><br />Regarding my black and white icon (which may or may not be the one I'm currently using): it the sea-dragon tattoo that is on the inside of my right ankle. It's also my personal logo.</p>