Eggplant Rollatini

I make these eggplant rollups all the time. I did a post on eggplant rollups several years ago but I make them so often I thought it was worth repeating.

Everyone loves these. They travel well so you can take them to potlucks. They make great leftovers too.

Once you make them a time or two they come together in a snap. I had always made them with the large Italian eggplants. Last week Amy asked if making eggplant rollups with Japanese eggplants would be too fussy and I automatically said ‘yes’. But then I started wondering if they really would be?

So, I took some Italian eggplant and Japanese eggplant home and tried it out using both.

You don’t need a recipe. All you need is.

Eggplant
Cheese, I had ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella and goat cheese (not pictured).
Some tomato sauce, any kind or just a large can of tomatoes would do
Basil-bread crumbs are optional. I didn’t use bread crumbs this time.

You will want to cut the eggplant lengthwise into thin slices (I cut these eggplants into three pieces each) and brush them with olive oil and salt and pepper.

You can either broil or grill them. Sometimes I grill them, this time I broiled them for about 5 minutes on each side. When they are nice and brown put some cheese (any kind) on one end of the eggplant and herbs you like and roll them up.

Here are the Italian eggplant broiled and ready to roll. Each of these medium eggplants were cut into 4 pieces.

Pour your sauce in an ovenproof container and set your rolled up cheesy eggplant in the container. The rolls on the left are Italian and the ones on the right are Japanese.

Now bake them in a 400F oven for about 35-45 minutes.

The verdict? Four of us ate these rollatini with lots of leftovers and all of us liked the Japanese eggplant best. The Japanese eggplant rolled up tighter and had more eggplant per bite with less cheese, which seems counterintuitive but we all liked the ‘more eggplant-less cheese’ bites. Don’t get me wrong, the Italian were still great! I think Italian eggplant are better for layering in lasagna and eggplant parmesan, but rolled up I think I am switching to Japanese if I have a choice.

This was dinner. Eggplant rollatini, kale pesto pasta and tomato and cucumber salad. All the vegetables from this weeks CSA.