No offense, Mom, but your eggplant parmesan when I was growing up was not your strongest dish. As with a number of other foods, I have come to like eggplant as an adult. For eggplant, I think it started with baba ghanoush, then chili with eggplant, then having eggplant in various Asian dishes (Chinese and Thai especially), and finally Greek Melitzana. Unfortunately Lori hasn’t come to enjoy eggplant as much as I have, but the one dish she enjoys is the roast eggplant dip that I make. The recipe is posted on the ViciVino.com recipe page.

Roast Eggplant Dip

This recipe is as much Eastern European as Mediterranean in origin and style. Eggplant, red bell peppers, onion and garlic are roasted with spices, then puréed to make the dip. The dip has strong flavors, and a creamy consistency, but does not taste like eggplant, and does not have the texture of cooked eggplant that some people don’t like.

With those strong flavors, a good red wine is called for. Last night, serving this with friends over, we opened a bottle of Dry Creek Vineyard 2012 Heritage Vines Zinfandel, Sonoma County, which is actually a blend of 85% Zinfandel and 15% Petite Sirah. This was a nice bottle of wine, working well with the dip, and a very good value at less than $15.

Quoting Tennyson in the last post, and paraphrasing Shakespeare in this one. Somewhere an English teacher is happy.

L’Chaim,

Larry