Eggplant Rolls Filled with Basil and Cheese

Hungry? Need to cook a meal for a hot date? Trying to figure out how to use up the excess goat cheese in your fridge?

Eggplant Rolls Filled with Basil and Cheese is the answer (are the answer?) to all of your needs!

This will be the first in a series of yummy-licious recipies posted here on bsom. They won't, of course, actually be recipes that I made up. But they will be recipes from various sources, with tidbits on which corners I have successfully cut without leading to absolute disaster.

So, today's recipe:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/12755
or also,
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/107076

These recipes (I've only made the first one) involve slicing eggplant, baking/broiling it, spreading a cheese mixture on the pieces, rolling them up, putting them in the oven a bit more, so they ooze, and then putting some tomato sauce on top. Good stuff.

The first recipe has you making your own tomato sauce; I've skipped that. They seem to be big into salting and drying eggplant. Maybe that helps something, but it's certainly not necessary. The first time I made the recipe I followed their cheese ratios. The second time I only had cottage cheese and havarti, which was rather odd. The cheese liquified a bit, creating a shallow puddle in the pan, but once you served them on a plate, the aesthetic catstrophe was eliminated, and they tasted quite good. So, if you can't get goat cheese (it's expensive..), that's ok, but I do recommend it. Using cottage cheese was pushing it a bit (though the second recipe does use ricotta).

The only tricky thing about this recipe is the slicing and broiling of the eggplant. If you slice it too thin it can burn easily while broiling. If you're doing two baking sheets worth, you can put your thicker pieces in one and thinner pieces in the other. Well, try to get them all to be the same thickness. The key is to use a very big knife, and cut it this way:

Cut off the ends. Then slice off one side, and then the opposite site. Now roll the eggplant over 90 degrees, and it will lay flat, without rolling around, and also your knife will have a flat, un-skinned (or, "skinned"?) surface to cut into (into which to cut?).

Bueno.

Serve fresh out of the oven, with bow tie pasta (you can put the same tomoato sauce on it), and a salad -- prefferably a spinach salad.