Eating With Ayla

Most of my cooking/baking seems to result in having something leftover that I need to use.   Which is perfectly fine, in fact, it’s great! No wasted products as I hate having to buy something for a recipe and then throw away the reminder.   My eggplant involtini desire resulted from having leftover ricotta.  Ricotta is a great product, can be used in both savoury and sweet ways – plus it’s also a cheese.   I can’t stop talking about cheese in my blog posts.  I have a problem!

This is also pretty easy to construct, just takes a bit of time if you want to make the marinara sauce fresh (which you should always do) and then preparing the eggplant takes a couple of steps.  But it is worth it, I love this dish and I love eggplant so it works.

Ingredients:

Marinara sauce (recipe in the blog as well)
1 large eggplant
Olive oil
Shredded parmesan cheese
Ricotta
Rosemary
Salt

Instructions:

First prepare the eggplant by slicing the eggplant into long slices, about 1/4 inches thick.  Then lay them out in a colander and sprinkle salt over so they drain for about 30 minutes.   After, pat them dry with kitchen towels and grill them with olive oil for a few minutes on each side.

Set the oven to 200 celsius.

To prepare the dish, take the ricotta and mix in chopped rosemary and a bit of salt.  You could use other herbs if you like depending on what you have.  I’m still obsessing over rosemary so that’s my choice for today 🙂

Take the dish and layer the bottom with marinara sauce.  Then take the eggplant and put a dollop of ricotta on one end and roll it up.  Continue with all the eggplant slices, and line them up in the dish.   Pour some more marinara over the eggplant and sprinkle the parmesan on top.

Put it in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Eat on it’s own or with pasta or salad.  Tasty.