Grilled Eggplant Layered with Spiced Lamb
Roasted Tomato, Feta, Mint
The seasons fly by, don’t they? We just held our Lusty Month of May Springtime Jazz Feast, and here we are already testing dishes for our Sunken City Supper Club SUMMER Event, “Mediterranean on the Pacific.”
It will be held at our friends’ home high on the hill in Rancho Palos Verdes overlooking the Pacific Ocean. For this theme we will be imagining that the ocean is the Mediterranean Sea. We’ll be cooking with seasonal summer ingredients and Mediterranean flavors. This dish made the cut…
Eggplant & Spiced Lamb Napoleon
Quarter Roma tomatoes and gently squeeze out juice and seeds. Drizzle with olive oil and season with Kosher salt, pepper, dried Greek oregano, and a little sugar. You can slow-roast at 250° for 2+ hours, or if you are in a hurry do what I call fast-roast: Cook in a convection oven at 425° until most of the moisture evaporates and the tomato begins to caramelize.
Meanwhile sauté diced onion and green bell pepper in olive oil until soft, add minced garlic.
Gently brown seasoned ground lamb then drain off the fat.
Add the lamb to the onion mixture.
Toast fennel seeds in a dry skillet for a few minutes. Use a mortar and pestle to crush the seeds. Add peeled diced tomatoes, ground cinnamon, dried Greek oregano, and fennel seeds to the lamb mixture. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally.
SUMMER GRILLING
Rub sliced eggplant with kosher salt and let sweat on paper towels for an hour, turning once, to remove much of the moisture. Then rinse off the salt, pat dry, and brush with olive oil. Grill over medium high heat. Slice the eggplant in generous portions so it doesn’t shrivel up on the grill.
Speaking of eggplant, I hope you had a chance to enter my Blog 3rd Anniversary GIVEAWAY!
It’s not too late!
Simply leave a comment on the Blog is 3! Celebrating with King Trumpets and Shishito Peppers! post for an opportunity to win a copy of Charlie Trotter’s Vegetables by midnight PDT June 24th.
Trotter is a master of vegetables. One of the eggplant recipes in this book is Eggplant and Potato Cannelloni with Wilted Spinach and Cardamom-Carrot Juice. Seriously, this is the most inspiring vegetable cookbook ever written! And wherever you reside in this big beautiful world, I am happy to ship it to you! No restrictions. To help me celebrate this milestone, please leave a comment and enter to win! And as always, thank you for your support, readership, and encouragement.
Finish the spiced lamb with chopped fresh mint and crumbled feta.
To assemble: place an eggplant round in the center of a plate. Scoop some of the lamb on top, then another eggplant round, lamb, then top with a third piece of eggplant. Surround the Napoleon with roasted tomatoes and chunks of feta. Garnish with a drizzle of olive and mint.
We seat up to 24 people at our Sunken City Supper Club event, so in addition to being seasonal and tasting great, we need to be able to prepare and execute the dishes in a home kitchen. If you are looking for a great summer dish to serve to a crowd, definitely consider this one! And please stop by later in July to read about the Mediterranean on the Pacific event!
FAMILY MAN
Wishing a very Happy Father’s Day to my dear brother, Don, awesome dad to my nephews, Stone, 7, and Jett, 5 and to all fathers out there on this the 100th anniversary of Father’s Day!
And Happy Summer too!
This sounds wonderful. Suddenly I am craving eggplants.
I love the way things inspire you ~ the Pacific becomes the Mediterranean theme ~ wonderful! And that’s a moreish-looking recipe, Lori Lynn. Thank you for the foodie inspiration, as always…
The presentation is beautiful! lovely flavours too!
This will need to be on my menu sometime this season. Looking forward to discovering eggplants at the farmers market:D
The hubster is a huge fan of eggplant. I imagine he’d be an even bigger fan given the lamb and fennel. Definitely need to try this soon 🙂
Hi Lori,
This napoleon sounds incredible. I love the side and top view of the finished dish. The colors are beautiful.
Love this Lori! I use a lot of eggplant, tomatoes and feta…not so much on the ground lamb (for no good reason) as much as I like it. Good call on the fennel seeds + mint to round it all out. Don’t know how the Sunken City Club will want to eat anything more after this beautiful dish.
Wonderful dish for your Mediterranean themed dinner. Can’t wait to read all about the event. Until then, I will give this a try this summer!
hello there 🙂
stumble upon your blog! lovely blog you have here. Found you on foodbuzz 🙂 Will be dropping by more often! Feel free to save me on your blogroll 🙂 Happy summer!
Jen
What a beautiful recipe and fantastic pictures! And I am still hoping for the book! Thanks for sharing your passion and talent.
Great recipe and beautiful photos. I could eat it now!
An exquisite dish, L-L…the meal transports me to Constantinople….east meets west!
Can I be your apprentice? This dish just elevated eggplant to new heights! I am enchanted by the flavors.
I like that you used ground lamb for this recipe, it has so much flavor and goes so well with eggplant. This is a beautiful dish. Is that chocolate mint that you’re using?
love the presentation of thsi dish! I never tried lamb before. I just dont like the smell of it somehow, but i love eggplants!!! 🙂
So many delicious flavors here, this is making me so hungry!
Great family pic:) Fantastic dish, looks incredible!
Wow, LL, I have to catch up on all this beautiful food. I’m nuts about eggplant, what a beautiful dish!
This looks so amazing- I will be watching for ground lamb to go on sale at my Harris Teeter!
This recipe is simply wonderful! The flavors are just right and the presentation is gorgeous! I saw the photo on Pinterest, and it was so beautiful that I just had to come here to read the recipe! Love it! And love your site :-).
I would like to invite you to share your recipes on a new photo based recipe sharing site that launched in May. The idea is simple: all recipe photographs are published within minutes of submission. And, of course, the images link back to the author’s site. It’s called RecipeNewZ (with Z) – http://recipenewz.com We already have hundreds of bloggers on board, I hope we’ll get to see your recipes too!