Maureen Abood’s Eggplant With Lamb, Tomato and Pine Nuts
Updated July 7, 2020
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times
- Total Time
- 2 hours
- Rating
- Comments
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Ingredients
2 large firm eggplants, cut into ½-inch slices
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt, more as needed
1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound ground lamb or beef (80 percent lean)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Black pepper
½ tablespoon unsalted butter
½ cup pine nuts
1 (28-ounce) can tomato sauce, or 3½ cups homemade sauce (see recipe)
12 ounces fresh mozzarella, sliced
Nutritional analysis per serving (8 servings)
18 grams carbs; 77 milligrams cholesterol; 478 calories; 15 grams monosaturated fat; 5 grams polyunsaturated fat; 14 grams saturated fat; 37 grams fat; 7 grams fiber; 854 milligrams sodium; 23 grams protein; 9 grams sugar
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Heat broiler and line a baking sheet with foil or parchment.
- Step 2
Brush both sides of eggplant slices with 2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt. Arrange slices on prepared baking sheet and broil in batches until they are deep mahogany brown, turning once halfway through, 5 to 7 minutes per side.
- Step 3
Adjust the oven to 375 degrees with rack positioned in the center.
- Step 4
In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the remaining olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent, but not browned, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add ground lamb or beef, stirring frequently and breaking up meat into very small pieces with the side of a metal spoon. Season with remaining teaspoon salt, cinnamon and pepper. Sauté until meat is just cooked through. Taste and add more salt or pepper, or both, as needed.
- Step 5
In a medium skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add pine nuts and reduce heat to medium-low. Stir nuts to coat them with butter and continue stirring constantly until nuts are golden brown, 2 to 4 minutes. Keep a close watch over the nuts; they can burn quickly once they begin to brown. Transfer nuts to a bowl while still warm and salt them lightly.
- Step 6
Coat a 13-by-9-by-2-inch baking dish with remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Spread ½ cup of tomato sauce in the bottom of the dish. Lay ⅓ of the eggplant slices in a single layer over the sauce, covering as much surface area of the bottom of the dish as possible. Spoon half the meat evenly over eggplant. Pour ⅓ of the remaining tomato sauce evenly over meat. Sprinkle with ⅓ of the pine nuts. Layer again with eggplant, meat, tomato sauce and pine nuts. Finish with a layer of eggplant and cover with more tomato sauce, sprinkling top with pine nuts.
- Step 7
Pour 1 cup warm water around the perimeter of the baking dish. (Sauce will thicken as it bakes.) Cover pan with foil and bake for 90 minutes. Remove foil and top eggplant evenly with mozzarella. Bake for 15 minutes longer, uncovered, or until the cheese is bubbling and golden. Serve eggplant warm, over rice.
The combination of savory and sweet in the eggplant with lamb calls for a dry red wine with lively acidity and spicy flavors. It just so happens that a good Lebanese red fits the bill perfectly: Musar Jeune from the Bekaa Valley, made primarily of cinsault with some syrah and cabernet sauvignon. It’s a less-expensive offering from Chateau Musar, which also makes a great, idiosyncratic, long-lived red. If this proves difficult to find, many other wines can substitute. Try a moderately priced red from Languedoc, which I hope won’t be too oaky, or a good barbera from the Piedmont region of Italy. Irouléguy in southwest France makes terrific wines that should go well, and negroamaros from Sicily should also work. If you don’t want a red, you won’t go wrong with a dry steely rosé. ERIC ASIMOV
Private Notes
Comments
Made this last night. Delicious.
As I was reading through most of the comments, for people who say the dish is way to watery, I wanted to simply point out that you are supposed to add water on a tray, where you will put the baking dish on, so that it's more like steaming, rather than pouring water into the food itself.
This is a delicious recipe, but as with many of the others from Melissa Clark, the ingredient amounts and cooking times are off. I have a professional oven with extremely accurate temperature. A total of 105 minutes is way excessive for this dish. I also found that I needed more eggplant to make three layers than two large eggplants produced.
Happy to see that Maureen Abood's excellent recipes are getting the attention they deserve. On her website, this recipe notes that the mozzarella is optional. I suggest not including it and instead serving this delicious dish with lebnah - strained plain yogurt.
I make this frequently with several modifications: * Do not put parchment paper under the broiler! It burns. Use aluminum foil to line the eggplant sheet pan. I use 3 medium eggplants. I use good quality pasta sauce and sliced normal mozzarella and I roast the pine nuts in olive oil not butter. I bake at 375 without the pan of water. Here’s my method: Roast eggplants per recipe. Cook lamb & onions & garlic per recipe. Use very little salt and be generous with the cinnamon. Roast pine nuts separately in olive oil. Layer: olive oil, tiny amount of pasta sauce, eggplant slices, lamb, pine nuts, pasta sauce, then cover with 6 slices of sliced mozzarella. (Fresh mozzarella becomes rubbery and it’s not worth the extra cost.) Add second layer of eggplants, lamb, pine nuts, more sauce and then top with sliced mozzarella. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes, no pan of water.
I made this mostly as written, except I didn't have pine nuts, so I used walnuts, I put it in a 9x9 dish instead of 9x13, and I didn't add water to the dish. I cooked it for 1 hour before adding cheese (feta, instead of mozz - I guess I made more changes than I thought..). It was very wet - there wasn't anything to absorb the moisture, even after 1:20. BUT it was DELICIOUS. Even my husband who doesn't like eggplant loved it.
Put grated potatoes in salad spinner. Really takes out all the liquid without a hassle.