Whisk Wednesdays: Aubergines Bayildi (Gratin of Stuffed Eggplant)

      The recipe prepared for this week's assignment for Whisk Wednesdays is from Class 24, Part 1: Aubergines Bayildi (Gratin of Stuffed Eggplant).  It can be found in the cookbook Le Cordon Bleu at Home on pages 255-256.  

      Lots of steps this week, lots of pans, but you end up with lots of flavor! 

      The recipe calls for simple ingredients, easily located at the local market, front and center being the eggplants, tomatoes, shallots, garlic, Gruyere cheese, salt, pepper, tomato paste, butter, and basil.  I could not locate the smaller eggplants, so I just worked with what I had available. 

      We were instructed to wash, stem, halve the eggplants, score them, salt them, turn them upside down on paper towels to draw out some of the liquid.    We then baked the eggplant for 15 minutes, I turned up my nose at how they looked coming out of the oven (not pretty) and made certain that boys didn't see this particular part or there would be no chance of getting them to try it at all.  

      Next I scraped out the eggplant and cooked it in pan until dry. 

      In a separate pan we needed to peel, seed, dice the tomatoes, cook them with shallots, tomato paste, and garlic until dry, reserving two thirds to puree for sauce to spoon over the eggplants at the end before serving  (oh, this sauce was so nice and fresh tasting and very good).  

      Next we combined basil, eggplant, and remaining tomato mixture to then stuff into eggplant boat shells.  Topped each with three thin slices of tomato, the Gruyere cheese, and a half teaspoon of butter dots, and it was ready to bake for another ten minutes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Not too difficult...everything comes together in the end and is definitely worth all the steps, pans, and time. 

      My family isn't too big on eggplant, and while I like it just fine, I am not ever too big on mixing lots of ingredients to end up with a lot of food touching together on a plate.  I know...I'm still six years old at times. 

      Anyway, I was a little skeptical of all of this, but figured I would give it a go and keep an open mind.  Happy that I did so, as this is absolutely wonderful. 

      Well, I thought so anyway...Mark ate it, said he really didn't care if I made it again, and the boys refused to even put any on their plates.  I think that it is just the idea that it was eggplant and they already made up their minds they weren't really going to like it.  Some things are like that.  Don't let that sway your opinion, this is a very good recipe.   

      If you would  like to see how the other Whisk Wednesday members fared in this class,  click here, and then on the Whisk Wednesdays connect to individual bloggers, or better yet, come and join us!  Shari has the ingredients posted on her site at the click, so while we can't post the recipe instructions, you can at least look at the ingredients, and I bet you can figure out a lot of it from there. 

Next Week's Assignment:

The next few assignments are Menus, so we are going to make the menu for one meal (hopefully), but then post each dish separately in its own week as posting it all at once seemed a bit much, following the schedule below.
Class 24: Menu #1 (Make in one session, if you can, between April 29 and May 6)
• Aubergines Bayildi (Gratin of Stuffed Eggplant) pages 255-256 (Post Wednesday, May 6, 2009)
• Rouelles de Veau Bourgeoise (Veal Shanks with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms) pages 18-19 (Post Wednesday, May 13, 2009)
• Gratin de Fruits au Marasquin (Fruit Gratin with Maraschino Liqueur) page 376 (Post Wednesday, May 20, 2009)