Dark Chocolate Drizzled Salted Fried Eggplant

Here's a fun twist for dessert!

Salted fried eggplant drizzled with dark chocolate.

Ok when I first saw David Rocco making this on his Italian cooking show "Dolce Vita" I had to rewind it to make sure I heard him correctly.

Eggplant and what??? CHOCOLATE!! That just sounded weird but as I watched I thought to myself that it's a simple enough recipe so even if I didn't like it there would be little waste, could just try a bit and then if it wasn't for me the rest of the fried eggplant could go into a pita with tomatoes.

Instead of the regular eggplant I used a white eggplant because it was on hand and has a much more delicate and sweet flavour, no harsh bitterness that goes along with the regular eggplants so it seemed perfect for the recipe.

Eggplant gets fried in shallow oil, no salting ahead of time for these, and then they get sprinkled with a bit of salt once they come out of the hot oil and drizzled with melted dark chocolate.

It's that easy!

Mahshi - stuffed vegetables

Sometimes the most time consuming recipes can actually be the most relaxing to make. Today I spent a fair bit of time in the kitchen, but it was all well worth it and very enjoyable.

I made " summer time grape leaves" (my summer blend is just herbs, garlic, olive oil and rice, no heavy tomato paste, meats and spices like the winter version)

Another summer version I make is using yogurt but lately

I've preferred them like this as the leaves stay fresher in the fridge this way (and they make yummy snacks all through the night)

I can serve with a mint/yogurt sauce on the side though!

A trip to the arabic grocer the other day had me hauling quite a bit of stuff home, well it's Ramadan and there are so many specials! :)

These little white eggplants were the cutest, so fresh and their skins tender and pearly, I've never cooked with them before but my mother has mentioned using them a long time ago.

I restrained myself and only got 2 because eggplants cause a throat allergy for me so I figured this would be a treat that hopefully would be ok.

I reserved less than a third of the rice blend and added fresh dill to that and then stuffed the vegetables and cooked them off in a small pot separate from the other grape leaves. I stuffed a few grape leaves with the dill mixture in the vegetable pot though :)

For photo instructions on how to roll the grape leaves refer to my older post here

Guess I don't have to cook tomorrow! And now I'll leave you with a photo sequence of putting together my mahshi dish.