Aubergine Stacker

I was poking around the fridge as I am want to do on a Sunday and I found a couple of big, gorgeous aubergines. Or should I say eggplants. They'd been in there for a couple of days and it was time their plain flesh was treated to some culinary magic. They really need minimal preparation I think, and I don't get too fancy with them. I sliced the buggers up real thin (about 1cm each) on to a baking tray, seasoned them up with salt and pepper (one side only) and drizzled them in olive oil. Into an oven at 350 F for 20 minutes exactly. While they were in there, I found some tomato sauce in a tub (you can just use that stuff from a jar) and slopped it into a saucepan and reduced until really thick. I thinly sliced some onions and a bit of garlic and sweat all this down in olive oil and a spot of water for 10 mins. I had some homemade pesto, which I made out of a huge bunch of slowly wilting basil we had in the fridge last week. (It's quite often that I just manage to catch food that's about to 'turn' and make something out of it. I loathe wasted food.) I located some old parmesan cheese, shredded mozzarella and the vestiges of a packet of good proscuitto. I toasted a good handful of pine nuts and and we were ready to rock 'n' roll. I took the aubergines out of the oven and let them cool slightly.

I stacked, starting with a sturdy piece of aubergine at the bottom, to hold everything up. Onto this I added onion mixture, then aub, then tomato mix, then aub, then mozarella cheese, then aub, then proscuitto, then aub, then pesto and parmesan, then aub. Repeat this 2-3 times until you have a nice stack. Press down each time to make sure everything is even. You could even use a spirit level. I covered the top with mozzarella and put the stack back into the oven to melt the cap. I put the leftover onion mixture into the middle of the plate and I thinned out the tomato mixture and dribbled it around that, dotting it with squibs of pesto. I placed the stack in the middle and topped it all off with some pine nuts/pignolas.

This particular stack must have been precarious as I cut into it and the whole thing more or less fell apart. Oh well, it all goes down the same way, and I must say it was DELICIOUS. And I didn't even need to pop out for groceries.