Quinoa is my favorite kitchen sink grain. In my years of making quinoa and adding a variety of greens, nuts, sauces, and spices into it, I’ve always come out with something good. So when I was thinking about uniting eggplant and quinoa, I went a little crazy. Usually I keep it fairly straight forward when I make quinoa dishes: throw in a green or vegetable, the occasional legume, some spice, maybe a nut for some crunch and I call it a day.
This time, I wanted to add more, more! I added sauteed greens, then olives, then vegan basil pesto! and then, our star eggplant. And the insanity was rewarded. The slight crunch of the swiss chard stems mixed with the brightness of the pesto, the zip of the olive and the spice from the roasted eggplant marry together in a satisfying forkful that I couldn’t stop eating.
It’s good to go a little crazy every once in a while, you may end up with an amazing meal.
Want more eggplant dishes from this series? You can find them here:
Nutrition DL: Eggplants – a great introduction to eggplant’s nutrition, as well as what and how to buy eggplants
Spicy Miso Eggplant with Soba
Eggplant Caponata
Ingredients
- 3 cups cooked quinoa (about 1 cup uncooked), cooled
- 2-3 medium Italian eggplants or 4-5 small Italian eggplants, sliced into 1/4" inch moons
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp chipotle (or other chili powder of your choice)
- 5-6 leaves of swiss chard, leaves roughly cut and stems diced
- 3-4 garlic cloves (1-2 diced for chard, remaining for pesto)
- 1-2 tsp paprika
- 2 large handfuls of fresh basil
- 1/2 cup almonds
- juice from half a lemon
- 1/2 can of sliced olives, drained
- olive oil
- salt to taste
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400. Arrange eggplant slices on foil-lined baking sheet. Lightly drizzle all slices with olive oil, salt, paprika, and chipotle. Roast for 15-20 minutes.
Heat a pan to medium heat with a tablespoon of olive oil. Once hot, cook garlic and chard stems until softened, but with a little bit of crunch left. Add swiss chard leaves, salt, and paprika and wilt chard down, about 5-7 minutes.
In a food processor, add basil, almonds, garlic, salt, lemon juice and run it. While running, pour in 1/3 cup olive oil and add more as needed until the pesto forms.
Combine sauteed chard, quinoa, olives, and pesto into a mixing bowl. Add more salt or lemon juice to taste, if needed.
To serve, plate a layer of the quinoa mixture and top with roasted eggplant.