When we were at the St. Lawrence Market last weekend I happened upon a bin in one of the vegetable shops with baby eggplant. Now I know it's far from eggplant season and the chance of these beauties being local were slim to not, but they were just so cute and perfectly purple that I couldn't resist. So I snatch up three and set about brainstorming what I could do with them.
There is a pasta dish I love, Pasta ala Norma, which calls for fried cubes of eggplant with penne and ricotta salata. It's so damn good and I haven't made it in far too long, it shot right to the top of my list of uses for eggplant. But as I looked these cute baby veggies, it just didn't feel right to dice them up. I've been wanting to make stuffed peppers lately, which I have no idea why since peppers are on my short list of food I just am not a fan of and that's when it hit me, why not stuffed eggplant. I love eggplant, it's sturdy enough to be stuffed and then I get that whole stuffed veggie thing out of my system with out the peppers.