A FEW TIMES I ATE THIS KIND A MEAL, AND I KNOW IT’S GOT A LOTTA TASTE APPEAL, ‘CAUSE I AM A HASSELBACK GIRL; YES I AM A HASSELBACK GIRL
It’s true: from my title you can tell I’m a dork.
But I love that amazing Gwen Stefani song. It’s one of those songs I could sing all day:
Gwen Stefani: Hollaback GirlIn any case… to return to the point, I am making hasselback eggplant. And, as you could see from photo #1, hasselback really just means sliced, but not all the way through.
This is something that I saw on my FB feed once: someone put tomato paste and butter on eggplant slices.
Okay, that’s three amazing things combined.
In my version I used one stick of butter with small can of paste, and seasoned as I like, and when I was mixing it, I used the food processor, and mixed cold butter right from the fridge with the rest of the ingredients so that the food prossessor blade cuts the cold butter into the tomato paste. Whenever you can use cold butter I think it’s better, that it cuts down on the greasiness of the final dish, and the food processor blade lets you do that.
First, pre-heat:
Here is what I combined in my food processor:
I used the “Sizzle” Graza oil to oil the pan, and I put the “Drizzle” directly in the paste mixture
I thought it was going to take about 20 minutes to roast
But as I checked on it, two things became clear:
~It needed about three times as long to roast
~It needed double the sauce for the large eggplants I had.
Push the sauce down between the cut slices, and, hasselback style, do not cut the slices all the way through to the bottom. I cut a slice off the underside of my eggplants in order that they would sit nice and level. And, as you can see in the photos, I tossed those cut slices in the pan too.
I love eggplant skin, so I didn’t skin my eggplant. Just washed the outside a little and took off the grocery sticker before I sliced it into about 1/3 inch thick slices.
Push the sauce between the slices:
Top with fresh basil leaves if you have any, and then cover it up tightly with foil:
After it had cooked a good bit of time (maybe 40 minutes?) I realized it needed more sauce:
Added pine nuts to my second batch of sauce, and this time only added half a stick of butter to the rest of the ingredients.
It’s not done in this photo below. When I cut a piece off, it was still very white and hard in the center of the slice. It should be very soft, spreadable, actually. So, back in it went:
Finally they had roasted long enough to be squishable:
Dave had some on crusty bread, and I had mine on some sort of seed crackers, and I added some parm to it. The child, the fourteen-year-old-chicken-nugget child, will not eat this. “Ewwwww!”
The thing that looks black is the piece I had cut off the bottom so the eggplant would lay flat. It is largely skin, so it is black because it is skin. I love the skin on eggplant because it’s extra … umami? Something.
I did glob a bit of tahini on top of one bite, and it tasted great, so I may process some of this into red babaganoush.
So let me hear you say, “This dish ain’t bananas, b. a. n. a. n. a. s. This dish is delicious, de li c i o u s” That rhythm doesn’t quite work, but you get the idea. 
Try it! Eat more vegetables! This could be a great part of one of my favorite dinners: snack dinner!
Happy and delicious weekend to you!
