Eggplant, revisited

Julie has renewed my faith in eggplant. I have never been particularly fond of eggplant. As a kid, it was pretty much the only Greek thing (meaning, moussaka), I wouldn’t touch. I just remember it being mushy and well, just generally not good.

I haven’t had eggplant in a number of years, though, and recently I have seen a plethora of amazingly good looking eggplant recipes on some of the food blogs I frequent. One of the first was Julie’s eggplant croquette. Now, it’s true that Julie could make pretty much anything sound and look good. Her blog is amazing and her food pictures are absolutely incredible. She could probably photograph mayonnaise, my most hated ingredient, and I would rethink my distaste for it.

After browsing the ingredient list, though, this sounded like something I would like–the eggplant being the only iffy thing. Since this wasn’t an eggplant-only dish, I decided it would be a great way to ease myself back into eggplant. And you know what? It was really delicious. Tom really liked the croquettes, too.

Mine didn’t turn out quite as beautifully as Julie’s, but they tasted absolutely delicious.

I made just a couple minor changes to the croquette. I sauteed the onion for just a bit because I don’t particularly like raw onions. I also added a little (maybe 2 Tbsp?) of grated romano cheese. And, obviously I didn’t make the onion relish, partly because I had some leftover spicy parsley tomato sauce (which was a GREAT complement) and partly because Tom and I are not condiment folks and, as a result, I didn’t have half the ingredients for the relish! 🙂 Thanks, Julie!