Eggplants, by Flickr user jayluker

A few years ago I developed (OK, maybe that’s a stretch: I made up) my Tandoori eggplant bites as an easy go-to party dish. Unable to either leave well enough alone or to keep doing things in an easy way, recently I decided to update the dish. By which I mean: “I didn’t have the right ingredients handy and was too lazy to go to the store, but at least planned long enough in advance to make something complicated.”

This time around, I used small regular purple eggplants (sliced into rounds and purged*), for starters, and I marinated and grilled them instead of a rub and roast.

For the marinade, I used:

• 12 tsp tandoori spice
• 2 tsp Vegeta
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tsp mirin

I marinated the sliced eggplant about 6 hours, and then grilled. They turned out to be really tasty, and people at the party ate them up. In fact, I even used mine, with some hot sauce on top, as a last-minute veggie burger, which worked very well, and might be another variation to try (on purpose)!

*Funny story: when I had sliced all my eggplants, I realized that I was out of table salt, so I purged them with sea salt I ground into powder with my coffee grinder and used a colander as a sieve. This, it turns out, is a thing that can be done. I don’t recommend it.

– MAW