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| Name: | Eggplant Spaghetti Sauce | Contributor: | Susan Bernick |
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| Description: | Eggplant Spaghetti Sauce | Posted: | 2005-11-02 |
| Key words: | eggplant, tomato sauce, mustard | Category: | Sauces |
| ID: | 665 | Updated: | 2006-04-01 13:57:38 |
| Ingredients: | 1 medium to largish eggplant
1 small-ish yellow or white onion, finely diced as many cloves of garlic, smashed, as you'd like 8 oz button mushrooms, sliced (in a pinch you can use a small can of pieces & stems, but won't have such nice flavor) Late additions: 1 14 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes with juice 1 6 oz (?) -- the small one -- can tomato sauce 1 4 oz can tomato paste 1 Tbsp sugar 1 Tbsp prepared dijon-style mustard (the secret ingredient) salt & pepper spices of your choice: oregano and thyme are a good combo with this. |
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| Preparation: | Pick one medium to largish eggplant that is firm but not rock hard, if you can find one. No bruises, gashes, or soft spots.
Large dice it. Make the pieces about 1/2" square or a little smaller. Nice bite size. Put the eggplant in a colander and salt very liberally, tossing to coat. Let it sit for about 30 minutes while you do something else. [This process draws out a lot of moisture from the eggplant, which accomplishes 2 important things: it will make your sauce thicker and the juice that is in an eggplant is bitter, so you want to make it go away.] You can do this step the day before you make the sauce, but the eggplant will turn a fairly ugly brownish color; saran wrap may or may not help much (since air will get in through the holes in the colander). Oh, yeah, make sure you put the whole thing in or on something else or you'll have eggplant juice all over your counters or all over your fridge. In a saute pan over medium-high heat, saute the onion and garlic. Don't burn either. After the onions have started to soften and release a bit of moisture, add the button mushrooms and eggplant, which you have rinsed several times to get the salt off of and patted dry. The goal here is to get some oil uptake and some nice "skin" before both the mushrooms and the eggplant give up the ghost and release *lots* of moisture into the pan. They'll do some of that anyway. Do not panic at this step, just keep heat up and evaporate the moisture you don't want. Lower heat a bit and add the late addition ingredients, simmer gently until the eggplant is cooked through and the 3 kinds of tomato product begin to meld into one tomato-y goodness. Serve over pasta of your choice and/or shredded napa cabbage, to make low-carb. |
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