Developer and Photographer | Amber Wilkie

Ain’t-Got-No-Time Ain’t-Got-No-Money (AGNOAGNM) Workday Lunch #2

Y'all seemed to like lunch #1 well enough, so here I am with another popular lunch here at the Wilkie household (minus George... he doesn't like any of this stuff. I make it when he's at school.) Today we're making "fried" eggplant with sour-cream-and-a-shit-ton-of-garlic-and-dill. There are two mandatory items here and neither of them is eggplant. I'm pretty sure you could do this dish with any kind of soft squash and will probably hit up some zucchini in the near future. The two items you need are Trader Joe's Organic Sour Cream and an olive oil mister. Now, to be fair, I made this before I got the mister but life is way better with it. I bought one on Amazon for like $11 so just suck it up. And the Trader Joe's sour cream.... seriously, don't make this with Daisy. I have eaten sour cream my entire life, with abandon, and this freakin' sour cream is by far the best I've ever had. I don't know why it's so tasty but it is really, really tasty. I more or less invented this dish so I could eat sour cream on something. Now then! Heat your oven to 350 or 400 and put a sheet of parchment or foil down on a baking sheet. Take an eggplant and slice it up - pretty thin. You can use the big purple ones like I did here, but it's even tastier if you get the long light purple ones like they have at the Asian grocery. And, like I said, you could really easily use zucchini or yellow squash too. Slice that bitch up, mist the hell out of it with the olive oil mister and then do some salt and pepper. Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes on the first side, flip, mist, and do another 10 or so minutes. If you're cooking big eggplant, do the whole 30 minutes but if you're doing the smaller eggplants or zucchini, adjust the time down. You want the thinnest pieces to burn some, but the other pieces to just get soft. Then take a couple tablespoons of sour cream (did I mention I love sour cream?) and throw into that: a couple garlic cloves, chopped (also love garlic, y'all, get with it), the juice of 1/4 lemon or so and a healthy handful of dill, chopped really small, and salt and pepper. Mix it up and throw it in the fridge to gel while the eggplant cooks. You may have noticed my recipes aren't recipes so much as "put some of this" and "cook for about half an hour... or you know, around there". It's how I cook. My apologies to all the Type A cooks who need a set of directions. Anyway! Eggplant will be done when the thinnest pieces are burning up a bit on the edges and the thicker pieces are just getting a bit browned and looking wilty. Take 'em out, throw 'em on a plate with an enormous quantity of the sour cream mix and eat away. Vegetarian! This is seriously good for me for lunch - eggplant has a real meaty taste and there's plenty of fat to keep you full. Also, eggplant absorbs oil like a bitch, so if you don't have a mister and go with a brush, just have a gentle hand or else you will be eating tablespoons of oil. Enjoy!