Stuffed Eggplant

Folks, we were a little daunted by last week's giant eggplant. It just seemed demeaning to cut such an enormous aubergine into little pieces, so we skipped over it a few times while making curry or stir-fry or pasta.

Jack suggested that making stuffed eggplant would preserve the vegetable's gravitas. We had never seen one before, but Google image search and Tastespotting assured us it was real.

Our criterion for the recipe was that it be fast, because potluck guests were imminent, so we based our cooking on this stuffed eggplant Parmesan, which bakes in 30 minutes, and we scraped the shells extra-thin to be sure.

(How do you hollow out an eggplant? A spoon; a grapefruit spoon, per the recipe suggestions; or, best of all, we found, an avocado slicer.)

Ours was tasty, but it looks like the next level in eggplant stuffing is to go in an ethnic direction: Lebanese stuffed eggplants, fried stuffed Chinese eggplant, Greek-style stuffed eggplant, and adorable miso beef stuffed eggplants.