EGGPLANT BOURGUIGNON

Eggplant cooked (almost) like a Boeuf Bourguignon

Total freestyle recipe imagined during an... insomnia! 
Well, in fact, I didn't imagine anything since I followed, although adapted it a bit, the boeuf Bourguignon recipe... except that I replaced the beef with eggplant!

My concern in this recipe is that the eggplant is a vegetable blotter: it absorbs the liquid in which you cook it... For this reason:

  • First, I cut the eggplant in cylinders (of around the same size of the beef chunks in the "classical" BB): thus, the whole circumference is covered with skin that forms some kind of a protection. which leaves the sa large Bourguignon.
  • Second, and as in the boeuf Bourguignon, I seared those eggplant cylinders on each face (skinless therefore) in neutral oil (I didn't want the olive oil flavor as this is not a boeuf Bourguignon's attribute - sorry Julia Child, no olive oil in BB!) till obtaining a nice char that will also avoid the eggplant to absorb too much wine before it loses is alcohol.
Then, the eggplant was stewed for around 1 hour, almost fully covered by wine (Pinoit noir), exactly the same way used for cooking fondant potatoes for instance. And I added the same classical attributes found in the BB, bacon (sorry "meatless Monday", not a 100% vegan dish) (I used duck bacon, but next time I will use slab bacon cut in dices for a better texture), carrot segments, mushrooms (baby bellas or the likes) and glazed pearl onions...
I use the cooking wine to make a sauce, reducing it and also, as there is no collagen in eggplant, thickening it with flour...

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