After getting your veggies out to you I know I have failed to get a recipe up on the site for you.  It has been a real struggle to successfully go thru the first active week of a business with a broken limb.  I hope the pain meds are organic (grins).  The truth is I will probably need a good cleansing diet to help my body through the stress and toxicity of it all.  One of the wonderful ingredients that is always good for that is garlic, another is hot pepper so let’s try the following recipe for the fresh eggplant, mint and tomatoes from this week’s harvest.

This will serve 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main dish

Ingredients:

1 pound  eggplant
1/4 cup olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 jalapeno or any hot pepper, seeded and cut vertically (by the way, you will have hot peppers in your basket 8/20)
1 tomato, chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 small handful fresh mint, about 1/2 cup of leaves stripped off the stems
1/2 cup olives (I prefer Kalamata but any will do the trick), pitted

OPTIONAL - ricotta cheese chucks 1/3 cup

Trim off the tops of the eggplants and cut them into 1/2-inch chunks.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large pan over a medium flame. Saute the onions and garlic for 1 minute, (anything good starts with garlic, onions and olive oil in a pan), add the eggplant and sauté for about 8 minutes until it becomes soft and starts to brown around the edges. The eggplant will quickly absorb most of the olive oil, so add the remaining 2 tablespoons as soon as needed.

Add the hot pepper and tomato and cook for 2 to 3 minutes more.

Remove the eggplant mixture from the heat and add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Stir in half of the mint leaves, and all the olives and cheese if you like. Set the mixture aside for 5 minutes so that the flavors can mingle. Just before serving, stir in the rest of the mint and serve warm.

This a really refreshing dish and its great with or without the added ricotta cheese.

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