Thursday, April 29, 2010

Roasted Eggplant Un-meatballs

Sorry about the picture quality (not that you aren't used to it by now). For one my camera is broken and two...........



These went REALLY fast! Note the little hand grabbing for more. I had hardly enough time to take a picture before I was swarmed by my little man asking for "more, more, peeeeese". I think I am really getting the hang of un-meatballs, and vegetarian burgers. These held their shape and totally passed the toddler test. There are two main tricks, a food processor, and chilling the dough, (or whatever you call it) before cooking. I actually managed to make these on one of the busiest weeks we've had in a while. I was in need of one of my favorite comfort foods...spaghetti and meatballs.....err....rather brown rice pasta and roasted eggplant un-meatballs. I don't know that this would fool a carnivore, but I think it was pretty tasty in it's own right. It was received well by all the family members, even my eggplant hating husband. Be leanient with the amounts in this recipe, depending on the size of the veggies you may need more or less bread crumbs, sauce, etc. The most important thing is that the dough can be shaped easily, and holds together well.

Ingredients:
1 eggplant
2 onions
6 cloves of garlic (divided)
olive oil
Salt
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 block of cream cheese
1 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste

I chopped up the eggplant and onion, peeled and crushed 4 cloves of garlic. I then mixed the veggies in a big bowl with a little olive oil and salt, and roasted them in a baking pan at 375 degrees (my oven runs hot) for about 20 minutes, stirring half way through. After they had cooled, I threw them in the food processor with the cream cheese, sauce, and two remaining peeled cloves of garlic. I added bread crumbs until the dough was thick and easy to shape (about 1 1/2 cups) . You could add salt at this point if you feel it needs it, I didn't. I shaped all the dough into balls and put them in the fridge. Then I went to sleep, got up, red my bible, went to the gym, came home, showered, went to the doctor, went to the lab, back to the doctor, over to medical records, back to the lab......well...anyway...I got home at 6 and fried these up for a quick dinner over brown rice noodles. They paired perfectly with my after dinner bowl of mint chip ice cream too.

2 comments:

  1. These are brilliant. I have a recipe for vegan meatballs made with TVP, but I have been looking a while for one that uses just veg. And this may be it. I will bookmark this to make oneday. Thank you for sharing. They look really delicious and I have no doubt they were, after all they passed the little hand to mouth test!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

    ReplyDelete

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