Grilled Eggplant Bruschetta
We live on a cool-n-breezy mountaintop, and getting an eggplant to ripen around here requires some exertion. This summer John built a mini-greenhouse that makes the raised bed it’s on look like a Conestoga wagon with no wheels. I was skeptical—it looks like the chard is fixin’ to light out for the territories—but the results under the Conestoga have been nothing short of miraculous. It’s at least ten degrees warmer inside, and lo! My last ditch attempt to grow eggplants was rewarded with several beautiful splotchy purple and white Listada di Gandia fruits!
Obviously when you have been sitting outside a mini-greenhouse for weeks, waiting for an eggplant to ripen, you want a recipe in which you can really appreciate the eggplant. So I settled on a Sicilian bruschetta recipe but, of course, I immediately deviated and started doing whatever I wanted. Alas. Does not follow directions well.
Anyway, this recipe is very easy. The longest part involves waiting around while the eggplant sits on the grill, unmoving, for 40 minutes. The eggplant’s purple and white skin turned all mahogany and black, but the soft flesh inside, when I cut the skin open and scooped out the pulp, was still white-to-light-green. You want to choose smaller eggplants over larger ones for this dish, because you leave in the seeds, so it’s better if there are not so many. You whiz up the eggplant pulp in the food processor with salt and pepper and lemon juice and some cayenne (don’t get carried away with the lemon and cayenne—eggplant is delicate and easy to overwhelm). Then you grill your bread slices briefly til they are nicely toasty, you chop your tomatoes up quite small, and you start building bruschettas.
Each toast gets a layer of eggplant puree, a spoonful of chopped tomato, 2 cute little basil leaves, a small slice of ricotta salata, plus one final piece of tomato (hopefully in a different and contrasting color to your main tomato) as the cherry on top of the savory sundae.
The eggplant flavor, which I find nicely promoted by the lemon and cayenne, blends harmoniously with the tomato and basil, and the cheese kind of ties it all together. Plus the eggplant makes your mouth buzz in that weird eggplant way. It’s essential to get the best bread for this dish—if you live near the DeLallo store in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, add a loaf of Talonica to your shopping list—so it can hold its own against such delicious toppings.
You could consider this recipe a bruschetta template and try swapping out different cheeses, different vegetable purees, different herbs. Bruschetta is a classic antipasto, of course, but they are also great for quickie lunches and snacks. If you make more than you need for the meal you’re serving, there’s your next day’s nibbles, all ready to be thrown together and scarfed up every time you walk past the fridge.
