Last updated Monday February 26, 2001
A superb open-faced sandwich, which is also good as a vegetarian pizza. Recipe is from my sister Anna. I don't know where she got it. Serves about 4 people. Reheats well with a quick warming in a microwave, followed by grilling in a toaster oven. Photographs below were taken by Alan and Gigi when we made the pizza variant of the recipe.
The recipe below has quite a bit of garlic. (Not that it's really so much, except that about half of it will be only slightly cooked, and so will be stronger than usual.)
Ingredients:
2 small eggplants or 1 large eggplant; about 1.5 lbs total
2 red, yellow or orange bell peppers (or just 1 if it's really big)
1 loaf French bread, or cooked pizza bread round
6 cloves garlic
10 T olive oil
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 lb mozzarella cheese
Salt
Chop garlic and soak it in the olive oil. This can be done beforehand to allow the flavors to blend.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Brush two baking sheets with olive oil. Cut eggplants into 1/4 inch rounds. Lay them on the baking sheets, edges touching, and spoon or brush olive oil on them. Put about half of the chopped garlic on as well. Salt them lightly, and bake 10 minutes.
While eggplant is baking, cut the bell pepper into 1/4 inch round slices. When the eggplant has baked 10 minutes, remove the sheets from the oven. The slices will have shrunk, so push them together. Lay the bell pepper slices on the eggplant slices, and sprinkle with dried thyme. Put it back in the oven and bake an additional 15 to 20 minutes, until the eggplant is very soft.
If using French bread (which is the official recipe), slice the loaf lengthwise, to make the greatest possible area for placing vegetables. If using pizza bread (here shown with one baked and a loaf waiting to be baked), it should be cooked already. Whichever you use, brush it with olive oil and the remaining garlic.
After the eggplants and bell peppers are cooked, remove them and heat the broiler. Toast the bread until golden. Pile the bell peppers on the edge of the baking sheet to expose the eggplants. Move the eggplants to the bread. Then pile the bell peppers on top of the eggplants.
Optional step: Grate some Parmesan cheese on top of the sandwich. Broil until the cheese is just melted.
Another optional step: Slice a roma tomato or two, place the slices on the sandwich.
Cut thin slabs of mozzarella cheese and lay them on the sandwich. (The slices in the pictures are a bit too thick. I was hungry and in a hurry.) Broil until the cheese has melted and is just browned.
Now you're done. Eat it.
When done, round out the evening by getting the cat stoned on catnip.
And everybody's happy.
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