Today is the second day in the ‘Do the eggplant’ series as part of the Blogging Marathon. Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the husband has been throwing more tantrums than my daughter when it came to eggplants. But he loved the baked eggplant with Parmesan. So at least I have one go-to dish in desperate times! Yay!

Today’s dish is the Spanish Pisto which is basically eggplant with a whole lot of other vegetables sauted and baked. I have used eggs in them but you can forget about it and it would still be yumm. Plus, as an additional precaution I grated some cheese on top after baking so that the husband won’t groan. So again, it’s optional and can be done away with.
  

I have adapted the recipe from here. Mine is a lot more simple with fewer ingredients. So here goes –

Serves 2

WHAT WE NEED

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, finley chopped

1 red chilli, finely chopped 

1 large eggplant, diced

1 large capsicum, diced

4 medium to large tomatoes

salt & black pepper

 a few sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves removed from stem

2 eggs (optional)

Grated Parmesan / Cheddar cheese for garnish

WHAT TO DO

• Soak the tomatoes in hot water for 15-20 minutes and peel off the skin. Chop them and keep aside.
• Heat the oil, add the onions, thyme, garlic and chilli and cook till the onions are translucent 
• Add the eggplant, salt and pepper and cook on medium heat for 5-10 minutes.
• Add the tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes
• Add the capsicum and cook till all vegetables turn soft. It should take another 10 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 190C
• Transfer the vegetables to an 8 x 8 baking tray and spread it out evenly.

  

• If using egg, make two small dips in the vegetables and crack the eggs into the dips. 
• Sprinkle salt and pepper on the eggs.

    

• Bake in the oven for 10 minutes until the white of the egg is just set but the yolk is still runny.

• Remove from the oven, sprinkle the grated cheese and serve with any bread for dipping in the pisto and egg yolk.

  

NOTES

• You can add zucchini as well. Tropical countries don’t seem to have them 😔 so I had to omit those.
• If you don’t have fresh thyme then you can use dried thyme but then you need to add it in at the end of the cooking, just before adding the eggs.
• One of my yolk was funny while the other was not. That’s more to do with my oven hot spots than anything else. This was when I baked for 15 minutes. So I suggest you bake for ten minutes or so if you want a runny yolk.
• From my limited research, I found corn bread to be the most recommended one with pisto but you can serve it with any other bread and it will taste just as good. I am letting you into a secret – I served it with pita bread. Yes, you read that right, pita bread. It was quite good, if I may say so myself. So go ahead and pick any bread. You can do worse than me 😊

  

This is my entry for the Blogging Marathon hosted by Srivalli. 

  
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for other marathoners doing this BM