Food You Can Eat: Eggplant Nightmare Sauce

First things first:  I am sick to death of eggplant.  This year’s garden looked like we weren’t going to get any yield at all in the eggplant beds because there was too much nitrogen in the soil (the indicators of which are gigantic plants with shitloads of huge leaves, but no fruit).  But, in early August, I went ahead and treated the soil with a wee bit of Ph Up from our microgreen supplier (because if the soil has too much nitrogen it washes away, making the soil too acidic) and BOOM—shitloads of eggplant.  I made eggplant parm, took a shot at moussaka, just fried it and ate it.  Eventually, I had to start giving a bunch of it away because I couldn’t keep up.  I feel like Bubba from Forrest Gump talking about all the ways his family would eat shrimp.

At least 10 of them simply went rotten.  Anyway, I was down to the last two eggplant (as well as the last sweet red pepper) and decided to try making a sauce with it.  As I’ve noted previously, I hate the texture of eggplant, so I’m not going to just eat it any old way.  It needs to be essentially invisible to me.  This turned out well enough to be the next FYCE post, but because it was an experiment, there is a dearth of images.  It’s pretty simple to make though so I’m sure smart folks like you can work through it.

A caveat before we get started:  Again, this sauce is made almost entirely from ingredients grown in our garden.  The only things that we didn’t use from our own property were the salt (because we don’t have a mine handy), pepper (because that’s a pain in the ass to grow and harvest), olive oil (because we don’t live in Italy) and mushrooms (because we don’t have that much shit on hand).  So, if you need to switch up ingredients it shouldn’t have a major impact on the result.  Red sauce is pretty forgiving—although I am not.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 large (or in my case, 2 small) eggplant, peeled and grated

Olive Oil

1 large red onion, diced

1 sweet red pepper, diced

8 oz mushrooms, sliced (I would recommend the baby bellas)

4-5 cloves garlic, minced

Oregano (I used fresh from our plant, but you can use dried if you need to)

Thyme (same)

Basil (same—we actually process the basil into huge batches of pesto and then freeze them in ice cube trays for easy portioning, which are then stored in freezer bags.  So, in this case, I used two cubes)

Salt

Pepper

Optional:  Red wine, about 1/3 cup

Whole stewed tomatoes, chopped

Tomato sauce (Again, I used the sauce that was processed from our tomatoes, which requires further cooking down, so I don’t know the exact measurement.  Just use a large can.)

Half pint light cream

After you’ve peeled and grated the eggplant, take a clean dishtowel (but not one that you care about very much), and place all of the grated eggplant in the center.  Then, roll up the towel so the eggplant is in a ball in the middle and twist the shit out of that towel until all of the liquid is expressed.  This takes some effort, so if you are feeble from eating all that new-fangled fake meat, then ask a carnivore to help you.  Set the eggplant aside for later.

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-high for a few minutes.  Add onion and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, for about 4 minutes.  Then add the mushrooms and keep stirring frequently for another 4 minutes.  At this point, you’ll notice that the bottom of the saucepan is getting a layer of dark brown on it from the veggies.  This is a feature, not a bug. If you’re planning on using the optional wine, just keep going.  (But, if you are not using the wine, then do all this cooking over medium, but not any lower than that.  That should prevent the dark layer from forming.)  Add the eggplant and keep stirring frequently for another 5 minutes.  Add the garlic, herbs, salt and pepper and keep stirring frequently for another 2 minutes. 

By this time, you should have a fairly thick and dark layer of black shit on the bottom of the pan.  Now you’ll need to deglaze the pan which is just Fancy Chef Speak for pouring in the optional wine and using a wooden spoon to scrape up the black layer from the pan.  It should take about half a minute for all of the wine to boil off, by which point most of the dark layer should have been scraped away.  Immediately after the wine has boiled off, add the chopped tomatoes and the sauce so you don’t get a new layer of dark shit on the pan because all that wine is gone (well, except for what is left in your Strategic Reserve).

Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.  Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 15-20 minutes to let all the flavors merge together and for the sauce to thicken a bit.  Then add the half pint of light cream and turn off the heat.

Ladle sauce on pasta of your choice, top with freshly grated Romano cheese, and serve with a salad.

I’m not planting eggplant in the next garden.