Tomatoes and Eggplant “Boats” with Ground Lamb in a Hot Tomatoes Sauce

The meditteranian version of stuffed vegtables — with ground lamb and a ton of parsley and onion. Mildly hot tomatoes sauce. Delicious.

Few notes before we start:

• I’m using ground lamb for this recipe but it can also worjk really well with beef.
• Don’t use overly ripe tomatoes. A ripe tomatoes needs shorter cooking time and might fall apart during cooking.

Ingredients

For the lamb filling (basic Kebab recipe)

• 2 pounds (~1kg) of Ground Lamb Meat
• Parsley — minced
• 2 spoons of Olive Oil
• 1 spoons of Paprika
• 1 teaspoon of Turmeric
• 1 teaspoon of Garlic Powder
• (optional) 1–2 spoons of Pine Nuts
• (optional) 1 teaspoon of Ras el’ Hanut
• 1 teaspoon Salt and 1teaspoon of Black Pepper (add to taste)

For the rest:

• 3–4 small Eggplants to fill
• 4–5 Tomatoes On The Vine to fill
• 3 Tomatoes — cut into large cubes.
• 2 Jalapeños (or other hot peppers) — sliced and de-seeded
• ~10 whole peeled cloves of Garlic
• ½ a cup of minced parsley
• ½ a cup Olive Oil
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 teaspoon Black Pepper
• (optional) Ground White Pepper to add heat

Method

Mmmmm… Kebab

Make the Kebab filling: add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix well with your hands. Let rest for 15 minutes.
(Tip: take a tiny piece of the filling and make a small round burger on a pan so you can taste the mixture and see if it needs fixing — more salt etc.)

Prepare the vegetables for filling.
Cut the Eggplants in half and empty some of their insides with a spoon into a bowl. Then, use a knife to roughly chop up the bowl’s content.
Take the Tomatoes, cut their tops off and empty their content with a spoon into the bowl with the minced eggplants (keep the tops! we’ll use them to cover the filling)

Preheat oven to 200ºC/400ºF.
In a big pan, spread the olive oil then pour the eggplants and tomato parts bowl and spread evenly.
Add the tomato cubes, sliced Jalapeños, half the Parsley.
Spread the Salt and Black Pepper on top.

Over-fill the eggplants to create little “hills” on top. The meat will reduce in size when cooking and will fit right in.

Fill the eggplants and tomatoes with the meat mixture. Cover the tomatoes with their tomato tops — vine on — it looks nicer and adds color.
Place in the pan on top of the base layer we previously prepared.

Bake, uncovered for 50 minutes.
Serve with some good Tahini on the side…

Variations to Explore

You can add more variety to the vegetables in this recipe.
Parsnips would work great, Bell Peppers too…