This is the follow up to last month's recipe for Italian Greens. The reason is because you will have to use those greens (spinach) in this dish. I gotta warn ya, this is a lot of trouble...even more than most of my other recipes, and God knows, almost all of them are tedious as hell. That's the Itailan way of life though; no pain - no payoff... in fact, the pain is the payoff.

 

INGREDIENTS

* Olive Oil
* 2 Regular Sized Eggplant
* Italian Sauteed Spinach (click on recipe below for Italian Greens)
* Sauce-Base (click on recipe below for Sauce Base)
* 1 Jar of Sun-dried Tomatoes
* 1 Package of Goat Cheese
* Romano Cheese
* Toothpicks (preferrably long ones)

First you have to slice the eggplant long-ways, so you will have long slice you can roll the stuffing into. Then you must drain them. Make a layer of these slices on a plate and sprinkle salt on them, then lay another layer of slices on top of the bottom layer, and salt them. Keep doing this until all of your egglplant is stacked and ready to drain. Sit a plate ontop of these stacks, and sit something with a little weight to it, on top of the plate - a pot, or even an iron will do just fine. They have to drain for two hours or more. If you haven't left the house to do other things, drain the water out of the bottom plate every once in a while.
Fry the eggplant in a large frying pan covered with olive oil. The eggplant will soak up the oil like a sponge, so you will keep having to add more oil. Fry them until they are brown.
Now set these oil-soaked slices on a plate with many layers of paper towels underneath. Most of the oil will remain in the eggplant, but let as much drain out of it as possible.
The stuffing: Drain the sun-dried tomatoes of the olive oil, and slice them in halves. Now all you're going to have to do is mix the the sun-dried tomatoes with the goat cheese. The spinach will be very loosly mixed with this clump of goat cheese...in other words, the cheese and spinach are more side-by-side, rather than blended as one.
Lay a slice of the egglplant out a aluminum foiled baking sheet. Make sure there is a lip around the edges of the baking sheet because the juices will overflow, if not. Add a blob of the goat cheese with a clump of sauteed spinach on top of the eggplant. Keep this mixture small enough to be able to roll the slice of eggplant around it. Once it is rolled, stick a toothpick in it to hold it together. After they are all rolled, cover with sauce, and stick in the oven. I'm not sure how long you bake them, but I'll betcha' you have enough common sense to be able to play it by ear. Ladle a little more sauce over them, and sprinkle with Romano cheese before serving.