Food You Can Eat: Eggplant Rollatini

Back to the drawing board.

26/10/23 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 16
It looks great but the taste was supremely disappointing.

First things first:  It’s eggplant season again.  This means another futile attempt for me to try and find ways to eat this terrible vegetable without noticing that it’s there.  I’ve already made the obligatory batch of eggplant parm.  I was planning to make a batch of eggplant nightmare sauce, but then I noticed how short my backlog of FYCE posts has gotten and realized I needed to come up with something new.

A caveat before we get started:  The red sauce in this recipe is from a batch that I just canned from our garden.  Get your own.

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 Medium Eggplant

Kosher Salt

15 oz. ricotta cheese

8 oz. Mozzarella, shredded and divided

½ cup Romano Cheese, grated and divided

1 Lg. Egg

½ tsp. Salt

¼ tsp. Pepper

1 Tbsp. Fresh Basil, sliced

1 ½ tsp. Fresh Oregano, chopped

½ tsp. Fresh Lemon Zest

2 C Marinara Sauce

Cut the stems and heel of the eggplant, then slice the eggplant into ¼” thick slices from root to tip.  Place the slices on a wire rack sitting on a sheet pan.  Sprinkle with kosher salt and let sit for 15 minutes.

Salting the eggplant helps to draw out the liquid and some of the bitterness.

Flip the eggplant, sprinkle the other side with salt and sit for another 15 minutes.  Rinse the salt off the eggplant, then blot dry thoroughly with paper towels.

Zoom in to see the liquid pooling on top of the slices.

Make the filling while the eggplant rests with the salt.  Combine the ricotta cheese, ½ the mozzarella, ¼ cup Romano, the egg, fresh herbs, lemon zest, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Stir to combine. 

Yes, all the pictures are in portrait mode. Space in my kitchen is limited so give me a break.

Grill the eggplant slices, cooking on each side for 4-5 minutes until tender and grill marks appear.

Spoon ½ cup of marinara sauce into the bottom of the casserole dish and spread it with a spoon.  Lay a slice of eggplant (short end facing you) on a cutting board. Add a mounded tablespoon of ricotta filling about 1 ½” from the bottom of the eggplant.

Carefully fold the bottom over the filling, and continue rolling the eggplant up into a tight roll.

Transfer the eggplant to the casserole dish and continue until you’ve used all the eggplant and filled the container.

Spoon the remaining marinara over the tops of the rollatini.  Garnish with remaining Mozzarella and Romano.

Bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes or until bubbly and fragrant.

I was finally able to clear enough space for a landscape photograph.

Let the dish sit for 5-10 minutes before serving.

I can still taste the eggplant, so I will not be doing this again.  But, if you are one of those defective people who actually enjoys eggplant, then you’ll probably like this.

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 602 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

16 Comments

  1. Eggplant is a deadly nightshade.  I don’t eat them because they kill you quick.  I will eat other nightshades though, like potatoes, tomatos and peppers, to which I have developed an immunity.

    • OK, I will eat ajvar that has eggplant, despite it’s deadly properties.  Ajvar is the good stuff.

      • I’ve tried twice and failed because I don’t have a gas oven or range. Once I broiled the eggplant in my convection oven but it’s not the same effect as holding it to a flame. The other time, I bought liquid smoke but that grossed me out. So yeah, those recipes don’t work for me to get the right smokey flavor.

         

        I love eggplant in most formats (exceptions being eggplant parm and your recipe).

  4. My mother loves eggplant and I am definitely team “Jesus fucking Christ can I eat something else.” Thank you for the important detail that you can still taste the eggplant in this dish.

  5. Also, I will definitely eat cucuzza mulignana despite it having eggplant.  It’s freaking delicious.

    I guess I will eat eggplant after all.

  6. My defective self loves some eggplant! It was the only thing I got really excited over from the CSA this summer. I just cubed it and airfried it – yummy!

     

    • Gross.

      Also: there is no such thing as “air frying”. That is just marketing bullshit to make you buy the much more prosaic sounding convection oven.

  7. I don’t remember if it was you or Myo that had the hot take that cauliflower is just a conduit for sauces and is otherwise worthless.  I kind of have that feeling about eggplant though I willingly make it and consume it.  Both cauliflower & eggplant are favorites of my family so I will try this instead of my usual parm or szechuan.

    • It’s probably Myo, but I have my own serious aversion to cauliflower.  I used to eat it all the time without any trouble.  Until…

      At one of the restaurants where I worked, I opened up one of the reach-in coolers and got punched in the face by the most foul smell I’d ever encountered.  I couldn’t figure out the source for a week and then just took everything out to clean the whole thing from top to bottom.  That was when I discovered a very small bowl with a few florets in it that had rotted.  It was so disgusting that just the smell of regular cauliflower sends me gagging to the toilet.

    • I do a dish like this but don’t do pork.  Mine has Thai chilis and vinegar so is a spicy tangy mix.

  9. I hate it when effort results in sub-par food. I had an epic fail recently with a Salisbury steak that included . . . diced apple.

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