Easiest-Easier-Easy: Eggplant

OK, I wish I could offer a trio of difficulty-scaled recipes for throwing together a quick eggplant side dish using only fresh eggplant and pantry staples...but I don't really like eggplant.  Sorry.  I've tried it every way to Sunday and I just don't much care for it.  The only two things I like to do with it are grill it, which is easy especially if you're grilling your main dish, and Julia Child's eggplant soufflé, which is not so easy and therefore excludes itself from this arena.  Fortunately, prime eggplant season (late summer) coincides with prime grilling season.  You can, of course, grill indoors.

I don't do any prep to my eggplant except to slice it on the diagonal.  Many recipes call for salting for 20 minutes, rinsing, pressing, blah, blah, blah.  Slice 'em.  Wait until the last minute to brush olive oil on them because they're like sponges and will soak it up in a heartbeat.

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Teriyaki Tofu and Roasted Pineapple

I make my own teriyaki sauce for this dish because the sauce is so prominent in this recipe and store-bought teriyaki sauce is just foul.  I make up the sauce a day before I'm going to use it, so I'll start pressing the tofu and make the sauce the night before Dinner Day, strain out the garlic cloves and ginger chunks and start marinating the cubed tofu the morning of, and then drain off the marinade to roast that night.  If you make this as a freezer kit, I'd freeze the teriyaki sauce separately from the pressed but uncut tofu block.  When you thaw it, cube the tofu and marinate at least an hour before roasting.

You can substitute just about any protein you want in this dish...marinate chunks of chicken breast or pork loin and roast for the same amount of time and at the same temperature.  It's a great way to accomodate vegetarians and non-vegetarians at the same meal without making completely separate main dishes.  If you do use tofu however, you can strain, freeze and reuse the marinate once more (if you marinate chicken or pork, chuck the remaining marinade).

I nearly always serve this with broccoli, steamed or roasted.  Tonight, I'm roasting broccolini on the same sheet pan with the fruit to save creating more heat with the stovetop.  And tonight's oven-use three-fer (#1 tofu/pineapple, #2 broccolini side dish)...a blind-baked crust for strawberry pie! 


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