Garlic Lemon Eggplant

This recipe is easy and quick fix for those who loves eggplants and another chance for those who just didn't discover this magic plant just yet.

Blog's Category: Vegetarian, Awesome Findings

 

Intro
 

Being from Ukraine, I love my eggplants. I remember, in a season, my mom was always cooking it - they were fried, sautéed, roasted and even marinated and fermented. Most of the time eggplant was paired with tomatoes, peppers, onions or carrots.

This recipe is a bit different from those my mama cooked - it is stirred-fried as a single ingredient, with some mediterranean style seasoning. 

The original recipe comes from my Vegetarian Cooking cookbook. I didn't have much success with recipe from this book but didn't give up on it yet because a lot of recipes look so good there. With the recipe below I took the risk and don't regret!

As always, I tweaked the recipe according to my rules and tastes. For example, I simplified preparation: I don't believe in a legend about bitterness of eggplant so I never do that "salt-and-then-drain-the-bitter-juice" procedure. Do you?

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What is it?

Easy: diced eggplant stir-fried in olive oil, cumin seeds, lemon juice and zest, garlic and green onion added at the end; and that's all!

Taste Description

 

Smoothly chunky texture of eggplants soaks up nicely all those flavors of lemon, garlic and cilantro. Small but mighty cumin seeds will spark, occasionally, with earthy notes as you will bite on it.

How to Serve

It's best when served cold and will keep in a fridge for a few days. Use as a side to your meal. I just love it topped on a piece of country bread with hummus. Hummus and this stir-fried eggplants are perfect companions.
 

Garlic Lemon Eggplant

 

• 1 medium-large eggplant, ends trimmed, diced 1" x 1"
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 3-5 garlic cloves, finely minced
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 5-7 tbs flavorless/cooking olive oil
• fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
• 1.5 tbs cumin seeds
• 1 tbs ground coriander
• 1 large lemon, juices and zest
• salt to taste

- In a large non-stick skillet, stir-fry eggplant until golden-brown. It will soak all olive oil right away but don't be tempted to add more - just lower the heat and continue to cook, stirring and shaking. Lower the heat more if it burns faster than cooks :)

- In a middle of cooking add salt, cumin seeds, salt and coriander.

- When eggplant is cooked and golden-brown, add the rest of ingredients, stir, adjust seasoning, take off the heat. Enjoy!


Note

- Omit cumin seeds if you are not fan of it - their taste is pretty pronounced in this dish.

- Add more lemon juice, apple cider vinegar (or any other vinegar) if you feel it lacks acidity.

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IN PICTURES

It's better to not overcrowd a skillet - I cooked my eggplant on a two medium skillets.