Gorgeous eggplants & BBQ season is just around the corner

Today I am going to share a recipe from my mother, a dish which is quite popular in my family and is done on the regular basis. Usually we would prepare this dish for barbecue parties, it goes well as a side dish with grill meat, but also as a started before the dinner or as a star dish for your tapas evening (as we did the other day). Meanwhile my husband become a huge fan of this dish too and even Pablo seems to like it. The ingredients are simple, easy available and low in costs, which makes this dish even more attractive.

There is no special name to this dish, home we are calling it eggplants with carrots, but since you have to build up small towers out of eggplant I would like to call it "Eggplant towers with carrot filling". Over the time I made some adjustments on this recipe, changing or adding some ingredients to make this dish taste lighter and fresher (like changing mayonnaise to creme fraiche and adding a juicy tomato slice) the way we like it the best...

Eggplant towers with carrot filling

• 1 big eggplant (2 small once)
• 4-5 big carrots
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1-2 tomatoes
• 2-3 tablespoons creme fraiche
• salt, pepper
• olive oil

Preheat your oven to 180-200C. Cut the eggplant in slices (not to thin) and put the slices in a big bowl seasoning it with some salt. Let is rest for ca. 20 min., the eggplant will let of some water. Meanwhile grate the carrots and cut the onion in cubes. Pour some olive oil in the pan, fry the onion cubes for couple of minutes, add the carrots and season with salt and pepper, cook till almost done. Finally add the crushed garlic (pressed through the garlic crusher) and cook for additional couple of minutes. 

Take the eggplant slices and place them on a baking sheet, sprinkle some olive oil, salt and pepper and grill it for 20-25 minutes in the oven. Turn the slices halfway through. Cut the tomatoes in slices. Add creme fraiche to the onion-carrot mixture and stir everything together. 

Now the building the tower part can begin...start with eggplant, put some carrot filling on top, top it with a tomato slice, put additional tablespoon of carrot filling and finally top it with an eggplant slice. Garnish it with some coriander leaves and olive oil.

Next to picnics, we also love barbecues, the weather these day was again very spring like and I already now looking forward to the barbecue season and the possibility to share more barbecue recipes with you....

Enjoy!