Lovely dinner with eggplants

There are a lot of things that I really love doing whole weekend – being home, being close to Daniel, being close to my adopted fish (yep, I have adopted a fish last year). I love sitting on the couch early in the morning, watching through the window of our brand new, scandi furnished apartment, and relaxing. I love reading or just standing there, making plans for the rest of the day or the upcoming week. Most of the time it’s quiet and calm and I can almost feel the serenity in the air. Real peace, real home, real love – piece of heaven.

It took us a lot to find, redo and furnish our home, but still there are a lot more to be done. So, I’m using this almost-furnished kitchen cause I’m … well, supposed to, I guess? Why did we buy all of this kitchen stuffs otherwise? And while cooking during work week is almost killing me, cooking in the weekends is actually nice. Most of the time, I’m cooking something for dinner, as 90% of the time we’re having a coffee and lunch at the same time somewhere out. Especially when the weather is good and we’re not risking our lives (like freezing, drawing or burning) we do prefer to be out of the apartment, walking, gathering moments, so on… After that, we do prefer to stay home not doing anything 🙂 And then – I’m ok with the cooking thing. 

So, 3 or 4 weeks ago, I have finally used the ceramic baking pots that I bought at Christmas’ sale in one of my favorite design places – Duka. 3 months since then and you’re using them now, you may think? Well, better later than ever I may say 🙂

Back to the dinner – I will now present you my really easy-peasy and delicious baked eggplants with tomato sauce and cheese 🙂

What do you need?

• at least 1 hour (cause eggplants should rest with a pinch of salt at least half an hour before you cook them)
• speaking of eggplant – you need 1 big eggplant or 2 smaller ones (~ 700-800 grams or something) – 2 to 3 BGN for a kilo
• tomato sauce (I prefer that classic De Cecco sauce, but you can use whichever you like) – 2 to 3 BGN for a bottle/jar
• an old mid-sized onion – up to 2 BGN per kilo
• cheese (~ 200-300 grams) – 7 to 10 (or more) BGN per kilo
• yellow cheese (~ 150-200 grams) – 10 to 15 (or more) BGN per kilo
• butter/olive oil (2 tablespoons) – up to 3 – 5 BGN per 100-200 grams package
• brown sugar (1 tablespoon) – up to 3 – 4 BGN per a kilo package

And what to do with all of these things?

1. Wash the eggplant(s) and dry them with a towel or a paper napkin.
2. Cut them long-wise on 1.5 to 2 centimeters slices, put them on a plate and salt them all over.
3. Now you have to wait half an hour, so you could turn the music on with something nice like this.
4. After you have already turned the music on, peel the onion, cut it and stew it a little with the bit of butter and pinch of salt (you’ll need a couple of minutes for that).
5. Put the tomato sauce to the onion and stew them together up to 10 minutes more together with a tablespoon of brown sugar.
6. When you’re ready with the above (approximately half an hour later after the eggplants are salted) it is time to wash them from the salt and dry them again.
7. Put a tablespoon of butter into the ceramic pan and after that put the eggplant slices all over.
8. Cover the eggplants with slices of cheese (up to a centimeter slice) and yellow cheese (up to half a centimeter slices).
9. Cover that with the sauce you have made (point 5).
10. Put that trays into the oven on 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
11. Eat.

 PS. I actually bought myself my first Hydrangea – white one, of course. I love her.