persian eggplant and tomato beef dish (gheimeh baademjaan)

Well, this was just absolutely delicious.

I had eggplants in the house that needed to be used up, so I just searched for a Middle Eastern dish with eggplant and ground beef. Voila!

Here's the recipe I used, and instead of searing the eggplant and doing all the fiddly bits, I just did it all in one pan in one go. It worked, and everybody raved about it. (I served it over quinoa, which I make in the rice cooker. So easy: you just double the amount of water, so if you're making two cups of quinoa, add four cups of water.)

You'll need:

• 1 large eggplant (or a number of the small Japanese variety), chopped
• 2 large tomatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 chopped onion
• lots of minced garlic
• olive oil
• 2 teaspoons sea salt 
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2/3 cup tomato paste (I used less than this)

Do this:

Saute everything except the tomatoes, then add them in, stir till they are soft, and serve over quinoa.

Muy muy delicioso! I'm going to be making this every couple weeks for sure.