Quinoa Stuffed Eggplants

Here's another post that has sat in my drafts for sometime.
I had taken several photos and for some reason my SD card in my camera decided it would corrupt the pictures. Not happy!
I have since upgraded my SD card and now I bring you these super yummy 

Quinoa Stuffed Eggplants

(Makes 6)

You'll need:

3 large eggplants

2 cubes frozen spinach

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1/2 green capsicum

1 tin lentils

1 Tablespoon mixed Italian herbs

2 cups cooked quinoa

2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

1/2 cup tomato passata cooking sauce

Bake the eggplants in a preheated 200C oven for 30 minutes until softened. Make sure you have pierced the flesh in several places with a fork so they don't explode. 

Cut the eggplants in half lengthways, and scoop out the softened flesh, leaving a small border (approx 1cm) around the edge of the eggplant.

Lay them out on a baking tray.

Soak the frozen spinach in some boiling water for a few minutes until defrosted. Drain. (Omit if using fresh spinach.)
Chop the onion, garlic, and capsicum.
Stir all the vegetables in a large bowl and combine with the drained lentils, nutritional yeast, herbs, quinoa and passata.  Chop the flesh of the eggplant that was removed and stir this into the mixture too (optional - it also makes a great dip if you don't want to add it to this mixture!).
Scoop the mixture into the cooked eggplants. Fill them quite well as this will give the eggplant case back its shape. Press the mixture down quite firmly. 
Drizzle a line of passata over the quinoa mixture (this is purely for presentation purposes, cause I think it looks better than just the plain mixture, salsa also works fantastic or any other sauce you'd rather).

Reduce the oven temperature to 180C and bake the eggplants, now stuffed, for a further 20 minutes until warmed through completely.

A recommendation and a story:

My husband took one bite into these & spat it out, declaring how awful they were!!!

I was chuckling to myself because I realised he had eaten the top of the eggplant! I thought everyone knew you weren't supposed to eat the top of eggplants - clearly not!

So I highly recommend removing the eggplant tops prior to putting these on plates.

After his initial opinion of this meal, he decided they were actually quite delicious!

 
Submitted for Healthy Vegan Fridays.

Add your recipe at:
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Question of the day:
Have you ever accidently eaten the top of an eggplant?