Defeating the Eggplant

I like eggplant.
what's not to like really, its fat and purple and delicious.

the market across the street has had giant piles of eggplant ALL summer.
and every time my boyfriend and I have a lazy dinner and make pasta, I have said... lets put eggplant in it. This causes him to look all forlornly at me and say "no Becky, it takes too long to cook, its too complicated" (reminds me of ARTICHOKES, ahem.) anyway. I typically take his advice to be sound, he did work in a restaurant as he likes to remind me, frequently. So all summer I took his advice and avoided the eggplant.

Then yesterday I stumbled upon a recipe that went something like this..

cut eggplant up
heat garlic and oil
sauté eggplant cubes for 6 minutes
DONE.


um?
wait.
that seems pretty.. uncomplicated, even for me.

then i realized, just like the artichoke incident, he didn't know anything about cooking eggplant! AHHHHHHH. (love youuu)


At this point I was just upset that I had missed an entire season of eggplant.. because like I said, i like eggplant.. its purple.


I invented my own recipe. i figured it would be hard to destroy something so simple.

firstly, I got a GIANT eggplant.
i probably have enough eggplant to feed me fore 2 weeks. (i was excited, okay?)

my other ingredients were:
1 pack of stuffing mushrooms (I wanted shitake but my store was out of them AND portabellas, hmph)
1 large clove of garlic
green onions
fresh basil
oregano
chili powder
olive oil
parmesan cheese
s&p

I cubed the massive eggplant and sprinkles kosher salt all over it and let it sit while I prepared everything else

chopped the mushrooms and basil up

heated about 3 tsp of olive oil in an extra large pan and then added the green onions and garlic to brown up for about 2 minutes

then i threw the eggplant, 1 tbs oregano, about 1 cup of chopped basil, a sprinkle of chili powder, a bit of salt and pepper and mixed them all together, then let them cook on medium heat for about 8 minutes.

I added the mushrooms and let it sit for another 10 minutes or so.

once it was done I sprinkled parmesan cheese on top and ta-da, done.

Lesson Learned: Eggplant is VERY simple to cook. Lesson 2: stop listening to my boyfriend's advice about vegetables. I don't know why listen to him about vegetables anyway... he hates vegetables.