Fried Eggplant Quiche

Today is Ascension Day, which means it is a public holiday. And as always, this means that all the shops are closed in Germany. Of course I didn't have time to check the cupboards and go out and stock up! I always have the basics like flour, sugar, eggs and rice so I can always put something together.
Today I had an eggplant. A single, lonely eggplant sitting in my fridge. Not enough to make a curry from or enough to make any thing really special. After all today is fathers day in Germany so we needed something special. The tradition being to get a cart, fill it up with bottles of beer and to head out to the nearest wood to get drunk with all the other fathers. However, something a bit more subtle was necessary since not many people follow the tradition any more. Especially not the fathers! So I decided to put the eggplant in a quiche along with some garlic and fresh, organic peppermint from my planter. I used the caramelized leek quiche recipe to help me along.

Preparation time: 1.5 - 2 hours. Serves 4

Ingredients:

Pastry:
	6 oz	Four
	3 oz	Butter, cold
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
Filling:
	5 tbsp.	Oil
	325 g	Eggplant
	1 tbsp.	Fresh peppermint leaves
	2 cloves	Garlic
		Salt and pepper to taste
	2 tbsp.	Parmesan, grated
	3	Eggs
	125 ml	Whipping cream

Method:

First of all I made the pastry for the crust. You can find instructions here. I discovered that I had some whole wheat flour when I was going through the cupboards this morning so I decided to use this for the pastry. I used half white and half whole wheat flour. Once the pastry was done I stuck it in the fridge to rest for a bit. While it was resting I put the frying pan on the cooker on high and tipped in 3 table spoons of oil. While it was heating I chopped up the eggplant just like one would do for an eggplant curry. They looked like this:

Once the oil was hot I fried them until they were golden brown. Eggplant is the most funny vegetable ever (at least to me it is). Initially it absorbs all the oil in the pan and then when it is fried enough it lets a lot of the oil out again. This is why I always fry my eggplant nice and brown otherwise it is just too oily to eat. I actually had to divide my eggplant into 4 batches to fry it. After two batches I added in another 2 tablespoons of oil and that was enough for the rest.

After finishing 2 batches I put on the oven (180 C fan, 200 C/400 F conventional), took out the pastry and rolled it to fit my all time favourite, almost 9 inch, flan pan. Once the oven was hot I baked it blind for 15 minutes (if you missed this you can find it in this blog). While it was baking I finished frying the eggplant. On the side I cleaned the peppermint and chopped it and peeled the garlic and grated it. I also mixed together the eggs and cream in a large bowl and added the salt, pepper, garlic and peppermint.

After 15 minutes of baking blind I took out my beans and put the crust back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so. Then I took out the crust and arranged the eggplant in the bottom of the pie shell.

Next step was to pour over the egg and cream mixture and sprinkle the top with some finely grated Parmesan cheese. It was all very simple. It then went in the oven for .... sorry about that I forgot to look at the clock! So I'm going to have to say "until it was golden brown". Probably was about 20 minutes or so.

The result was consumed with a salad of lettuce and tomatoes and was "a keeper" according to my husband. And that is basically why I am sharing it with you all. My oldest was not too keen on it, she didn't like the peppermint :(