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Eggplant Pinwheels
Author: Phyllis Ring
A favorite family appetizer (sometimes we also make a whole meal of them with some salad or soup, or serve them over pasta) evolved when we had a vegetable garden and wound up with more eggplant than we knew what to do with. Those funky purple vegetables were taking over not only the yard, but every inch of counter space in our small kitchen.
And did anyone want to eat them? Not a chance. “Yuck,” was our two teen-agers’ unanimous reply when I suggested we somehow serve them as the vegetable with our dinners to use them up. And no matter how many we gave away, they seemed to multiply like purple rabbits.
About the only dish we’d ever previously eaten and enjoyed that was made from this vegetable was eggplant parmesan, which we all loved, especially our vegetarian son. But it seemed like so much work, and how were we going to use up all of those eggplants with just one dish?
Then, at a wedding party, a friend served some eggplant appetizers, often called eggplant roll-ups or rollatini, which are often popular in Italian restaurants. We all gobbled down so many that we almost couldn’t eat the wedding feast that followed. They were like bite-sized versions of the eggplant parmesan dish we all liked so much.
Suddenly, all of that eggplant at home seemed like some sort of gold and we were actually eager to do something with it. That weekend, the four of us had a little cooking frenzy in our kitchen with the goal of duplicating this recipe while also making it as easy (and still tasty) as possible.
There were plenty of different opinions about how we should go about this, and we had a few false starts. If we hadn’t known how good the results could taste, we might have given up. Our friend had “given” us the recipe by simply listing off a bunch of ingredients and making it sound as though we just tossed them all together, although we knew it wasn’t as simple as that.
When our eggplant turned out soggy on the first go-round, it took a call to that friend to discover that the first step of cooking thin slices of eggplant for a short time at a good boil in salted water is key.
“Just like I told you we should,” my son reminded us. He has really turned out to be the best cook in the family and now cooks for a whole foods café.
We never second-guess his cooking recommendations now. The signs of his future cooking prowess were there that day. While my daughter and I mainly rushed around like panicked chickens, he steadily poured out ingredients with care, handling the egg like it was a precious object. His dad mostly handled the phone calls back and forth to our buddy, as I recall.
Our daughter, the garlic-lover, insisted that we only use fresh garlic “It won’t be any good without it, and I don’t see why eight cloves is too many,” she persisted, although she eventually compromised at 3-4 instead. (For all of her fuss I’ve served it to her since when it’s been made with garlic powder and she didn’t seem to notice.)
Since we also had plenty of tomatoes on hand, we made our own sauce, although on many nights when I make these now, especially for potlucks, I simply grab a jar of spaghetti sauce and it winds up tasting just as good.
After we collaborated together on that first batch, we munched these roll-ups happily for days afterward. We found that they reheated well in a microwave for lunches away from home, and have also found that it’s possible to make the filling in advance, for convenience sake, and store it in the fridge sealed securely overnight until you need it. Once this dish is cooked, you can also freeze quantities of it for future use.
Although we haven’t had time for a garden these days, and we hardly ever cook together, we’re still happy to take an overabundance of eggplants off other gardeners’ hands in order to cook up this tasty favorite. As my daughter pointed out one day when we were snacking on these, “This is one of the few things that the four of us have ever learned together how to do.”
Eggplant Pinwheels Recipe
Ingredients
- A large eggplant, peeled
- 3 Tb milk
- 4 Tb grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 C of bread crumbs
- 1 Tsp dried basil
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (we like Celtic sea salt)
- 3 cloves of garlic, pressed – use more if you’re a garlic-lover, or you can use 1/8 tsp. garlic powder
- 16 oz of homemade or jar spaghetti sauce
Instructions
- Cut eggplant lengthwise into approximately 12 1/4-inch slices.
- In a deep skillet or a Dutch-oven-sized pan, bring salted water to a boil.
- Add eggplant and boil in salted water for about 4 minutes, then drain well on paper towels.
- Combine the beaten egg, milk, bread crumbs, cheese, and seasonings in a separate bowl.
- Divide mixture into 12 portions and place one portion on each eggplant slice.
- Roll up the slices and place them in a large baking pan with the seam side down.
- Spoon spaghetti sauce over roll-ups, cover with lid or foil and bake at 350° for 30 minutes.
- Uncover and bake for an additional 30-40 minutes.
- For variety, and added nutrition, include a cup of baby spinach, chopped mushrooms, and/or finely chopped sautéed onions the filling mixture.
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