Grilled Eggplant & Minty Feta Roll-Ups

 

Who doesn't work too much, raise their hand.

If your hand is up, I'm looking at you with googly-jealous eyes. If not, let's not start that ol' who works more and harder routine. No one ever wins.

I'm a teacher. Not a school teacher, but an English-as-a-second-language teacher. As such, I still follow those school-year rhythms. This time of year I'm frazzled and longing for summer. Aren't we all?

Sometimes I pretend I have the luxury of scads of time on my hands. I wander around the farmer's market two times. First, to see which veg are looking sweet that morning, to get a feel for the prices, and to see who looks like a friendly farmer. Second, to seal the deal on some fennel, assorted lettuces, a new potted herb (and maybe some strawberries from god-knows-where if I'm feeling like a naughty locavore.) I've done this many a recent Saturday, all the while pretending my weekend clock isn't loudly ticking away.

Since eggplant isn't really a Czech veg, the guy holding down the stall revealed they were from Italy. Well, buying from Italy when in Czech Republic is like buying from Florida when in South Carolina. In other non-geographical words, it's not so far. 

Fits in perfectly (and in my usual time-crunch style) with the Fourth Forever Nigella blogging challenge: Street Party. This month it's being hosted by Mardi at eat.live.travel.write. I'm looking forward to scouting out some new finger food recipes when the posts are all up. For this one, I chose a recipe from Nigella's website, so not sure which book it's from: Griddled Aubergines with Feta, Mint, and Chili. I had to tweak it a bit to accommodate my skinny eggplants/aubergines, which wouldn't roll up very nicely.

The biggest change made was adding strips of tortillas to the line-up (also added in kalamata olives.) The tortillas helped stabilize the form quite well, and hubs (who is partial to carbs as a general rule) said he wouldn't have liked it as much without the tortilla - too much flavour. I then reminded him they are meant to be an appetizer, not a dinner as we made them into. As an appetizer they would be great as originally written. As a light meal, the tortilla rounds them out a bit.

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Recipe: Grilled Eggplant & Minty Feta Roll-Ups

Adapted from Nigella.com 

Serves 2 (as a light meal)

Eat with Pinot Grigio (Rulandské šedé)

2 eggplants (aubergines)

4 Tb olive oil

6 oz (180g) feta cheese

1 red chili pepper (or half if you don't like much heat), deseeded and minced

10 kalamata olives, minced

juice of half a lemon

small handful of fresh mint leaves

2 tortillas

Slice the eggplants the long way, thinly, into about 5 slices each. Heat up a grill machine (or broiler, grill pan, or actual grill.) Brush both sides of the eggplant slices generously with olive oil. Grill a few minutes, until soft and grill marks are showing. In the meantime, mix the feta until crumbled, add in the minced chili, olives, lemon juice and mint leaves.

When the eggplants are done, lay out to cool a minute and get the tortilla slices ready. A big tortilla should yield about 6 strips. You'll want to double them. That is, every eggplant slice will get two tortilla strips laid on top it. Then put a couple small spoons of the feta mix on the big end of the eggplant. Roll up and seal with a toothpick. 

We found them difficult to eat using only our hands, so I really do think as an appetizer wider eggplants should be used. But as a wee dinner, this totally fits the bill as is. 

Dobrou Chut'/ Enjoy.
-- Jo