Eggplant Meatballs

Slave to the CSA...

Eggplant is the Iron Chef ingredient today. Everything is going to have a little eggplant in it.

Since I don't want a whole bunch of leftovers, here's a 1-2 serving eggplant meatballs and some sauce to go with it. Step one goes into both parts. There will be extra sauce, for eggplant Parmesan, eggplant pizza, etc.


Step one:
1/4 cup olive oil (you oil phobes can use less, I like my sauce with a lot of olive oil)
1 small onion
1 head garlic (6-8 cloves)
1 pretty big eggplant peeled and diced pretty small 1/4 in cubes
10-15 fresh basil leaves if you've got 'em; chopped
1TBS Italian seasoning (I like Penzeys Italian Sausage seasoning)
1 tsp salt (to taste-the sausage seasoning is salted)

For Eggplant balls:
1/4-1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

For Sauce:
1 28 oz can tomatoes (or 4 cups fresh plum tomatoes peeled since it's tomato season and all)


Vegan Parmesan
1/4 cup pine nuts (ground)
1 TBS nutritional yeast
pinch salt

Saute onion and garlic in oil in a large sauce pot, add eggplant, basil, and seasoning and cool until eggplant is well cooked. Mash some of the eggplant if you like, so there are still some small chunks. Processing in a food processor would cut the seeds which may make the sauce bitter, so just mash it with a masher or fork or food mill.

In a separate bowl, take 1 cup of the eggplant mixture and let cool to room temperature. Then add the bread crumbs (try 1/4 first, then more if it's too wet.) Form into 8 small balls and bake at 400 for about 30 minutes turning occasionally.

Add the tomatoes to the remaining eggplant in the sauce pot and simmer until eggplant balls are done baking.

Place 3-4 eggplant balls on a plate and top with sauce and vegan Parmesan.

I ate this for breakfast. Yum! I still have 5 eggplant left, so I'll be making this again to top some spaghetti.

On top of spaghetti, all covered with vegan cheese....I lost my poor eggplant meatball, when somebody sneezed....