Greek Eggplant rolls (Bourekakia)

These are delicious little rolls that you can have as a side dish or as part of a buffet. Ideally, the Greek cheese anthotiro is used, but if this is unavailable, riccota can be used. Likewise, the Greek hard cheese kefalograviera is used ideally, but if this is unavailable, parmesan can be used (the Italians have a few nice cheeses as well :) ) As stated in the recipe, you should get sun-dried tomatoes that have been preserved in olive oil.

Ingredients

1 kg long aubergines

500g anthotiro (soft cheese like ricotta)

4 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped, that have been preserved in a jar of olive oil.

2 tablespoons of the olive oil that the tomatoes were preserved in

250g kefalograviera cheese (or parmesan) grated

250 ml sunflower oil

1 tablespoon chopped basil leaves

For the sauce

1 fresh, long green chilli pepper, chopped

1 litre puree from fresh, ripe tomatoes

1 whole garlic (small) chopped

1 tablespoon basil leaves, chopped

5 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper

Preparation

Sauce

Saute the garlic for 2 minutes in the olive oil.

Add the chilli pepper and sauté for another minute, stirring with a wooden spoon.

Add the tomato puree, salt and pepper and simmer for approximately 30 minutes until the sauce is ready.

Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of chopped basil on top and stir well.

Eggplants

Remove strips of the eggplant skin, so that the eggplants have alternate ‘stripes’ of skin and no-skin.

Slice the eggplants lengthwise into strips of approx. ½ cm thickness.

Place them in salty water for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, remove from the water and drain well.

Fry the eggplant strips in the sunflower oil in a heavy bottomed pan.

Remove and place them on kitchen paper to drain the oil.

Mix together the anthotiro, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, half of the grated cheese, 1 tablespoon basil and the 2 tablespoons of olive oil from the tomatoes.

Mix them together well with your hands.

Place 1 teaspoonful of the mixture on top of the narrow end of one of the eggplant strips.

Roll up the eggplant strip, starting at the narrow end with the mixture.

Repeat this for all the eggplant strips.

Cover the bottom of a shallow oven dish with some of the sauce you prepared earlier and place the eggplant rolls in the dish next to each other.

Spread the remaining sauce on top.

Sprinkle the remaining grated cheese on top.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

 

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