Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Eggplant "Caviar" and Tuna Tonnata

When Ron and I were in Paris we ate at an amazing restaurant called Les Cocottes de Christian Constant. DSC_2016
It was one our favorite meals in Paris, the food and service were both completely unpretentious - something we didn't always find while dining in Paris! See Dave Lebovitz write up about it here. Ron started with an aubergine "caviar" dish - probably because he thought it was going to have actual caviar in it. When the dish arrived, there was no caviar but neither of us were disappointed! It was served in a cute glass jar and had layers of eggplant and great olive oil packed tuna - served with french baguette, this starter was simple and perfect. I've been meaning to try to replicate it forever!

We got our first eggplant at the CSA this week and I immediately thought of this dish. I ended up combining an Eggplant Caviar recipe from Food and Wine magazine with a Tuna Tonnato with Eggplant salad from Gourmet magazine.

Split and roast the eggplant until it's deflating in the oven. Mix the scooped out eggplant with sauteed, finely diced, red pepper, onion and garlic, chopped parsley and lemon juice.

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I pureed one can of water packed tuna with some mayo, olive oil, capers, anchovies and more lemon juice - then I mixed the pureed tuna with a can of drained olive oil packed tuna. I really liked the puree and it would be even better if I was more generous with the olive oil!

Tuna + eggplant + cherry tomatoes:

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With a good sprinkle of kosher salt equals something very delicious!

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Here I spread it on a wasa cracker but a good whole grain baguette would have put this over the top.

2 comments:

ron Cornwall said...

Why your fonts wonky?

That meal was amazing in Paris, so now you need to make this while I'm actually home!

Anonymous said...

Cool recipe. I stumbled onto Liscio's blog- they have a tone of good recipes for sandwiches, french toast.. you name it. http://lisciosbakery.com/blog