Eggplant Tiramisu Dessert

Category: Confectionery

Kitchen: italian

Ingredients
eggplant	1.5KG
water for making syrup	1 glass
sugar	300g
(200g for syrup and 100g for cheese filling)
Ricotta	500g
(can be replaced with a mixture: pasty cottage cheese and cream cheese)
egg	2 pcs
zest of 1 lemon
milk	150 ml
dark chocolate	200 g
a pinch of salt
cinnamon
nuts (I have pine nuts) / candied fruits to taste

Cooking method

If you love the unusual in cooking and want to surprise your family, then this dessert will surely amaze everyone! Especially if you tell about the ingredients only at the end, after tasting, since the human mind is conservative (with rare exceptions ...) and the eggplant is perceived as a vegetable, although it is a berry ...
This recipe, having hit the Internet, has already found many interested culinary experimenters. Russian-language source - article "What a fruit" by Elena Chekalova, host of the program "There is happiness!" In this article, Elena talks about Italian eggplant dishes that are unusual for us. Here, on our website, there is already an embodiment of one of the recipes of her article - a green biscuit roll with eggplant mousse - from Natasha-natapit .
I decided on "Amalfi Pie".
so
It is better to choose eggplants longer, denser and pitted.
Peel the eggplants from the blue skin, cut into strips a little less than half a centimeter thick.
Dissolve the syrup from a glass of water and an incomplete glass of sugar in a saucepan, add a pinch of cinnamon.
And over very low heat, boil the eggplants a little until they collect sugar.
The eggplant leaves are now pliable and flexible, which means they can be taken out.
Take a detachable form, grease it with butter, sprinkle with sugar and line the bottom with soft overlapping strips so that they first spread along the bottom, then go up the wall to the edge and hang down - if you were lucky enough to buy long eggplants, then you can cover with free ones at the end of the pie assembly the ends of the filling. And if the eggplant length was only enough for the bottom and walls - it's okay, select the most even and beautiful ribbons left for the layer of eggplant - this will be the top of your dessert.
Make the ricotta filling. Grind it with eggs, a pinch of salt, the remaining sugar and, like in curd pudding, put lemon zest, nuts and candied fruits. I wanted to leave the pure taste for tasting, not “clogged” with many aromas, but only shaded, so I have an additional taste - only pine nuts and good chocolate.
When placing the filling, pour melted chocolate over each layer of ricotta. To do this, break a bar of dark chocolate into small pieces, pour in very hot milk and, stirring, dilute in a water bath. After a couple of minutes, you can pour the chocolate sauce over the ricotta with a spoon. One layer of the pie is ready, and another layer will go on top, the same - eggplant, ricotta with sweets and chocolate sauce. Only instead of eggplant ribbons, ugly trimmings will fit here, in the middle.
Cover the eggplant with the ends (towards the center) of the filling - if you have them long. Or lay out the top layer with those beautiful eggplant leaves that you selected in advance.
Put in an oven preheated to 189 degrees for 30-40 minutes. 10 minutes before the end, sprinkle with coarse sugar on top - for a slightly crispy caramel crust.
Cool, or even better, leave in the refrigerator overnight.
My impressions:
I tried the second option even more authentic - not with chocolate, but with herbal liqueur, as the monks in Tramonti originally did and I cooked the eggplant ribbons in liqueur syrup.
Everyone who was treated to the dessert liked the dessert, although everyone noted the unusual and unrecognizable
In principle, there is no need to bother with the taste of eggplants, they should, in my opinion, play only a textured role, as Elena says - "... we still did not understand what the" dough "melting in the mouth is from - like jellied fruit" ... Therefore, add whatever you want to the filling to enrich the taste and aroma - zest, candied citrus and ginger fruits, all kinds of nuts ...
I would compare this dessert with another, also Italian, - tiramisu: almost the same delicate structure that melts in the mouth ... but with a different taste ...

Note

Here is a quote about this dessert from Elena's article, so that you can even remotely imagine the taste and be impressed:

“… Two years ago, my husband and I were in Capri and somehow stopped at the neighboring Amalfi - on a tip from friends, we wanted to see a restaurant. It was five o'clock in the evening, the most non-restaurant time. They only asked for tea with dessert, which turned out to be simply delicious. Delicate chocolate-caramel-fruit cake. The plates were already empty, but we still did not understand why the "dough" melting in the mouth was like jellied fruit. There is definitely a cottage cheese filling, candied fruits, chocolate, but what else? We went through all the most exotic fruits, and still had to call the waitress. She smiles: a pie with eggplant "dough"!
Could you, I asked, meet the chef who came up with such an amazing dish? And the waitress smiles again and waves her hand somewhere in the mountains. There is a monastery of Tramonti, the monks there invented. Back in the 16th century. After all, they were among the most educated people of their time, they probably carried out scientific experiments. Of course, there was no chocolate then, they poured herbal liqueur on the eggplant ...
… No, not only these monks, says my new friend Valentino. In the vicinity of Naples and on the islands, from Capri to Sicily itself, dessert made from vegetables is quite a common thing. Someone is cooking, like in Amalfi, with chocolate. Someone decorates the biscuit with candied eggplant cubes or candied zucchini.

And one more quote - just smiled….

“… Do you know what it turns out to be? The most common moussaka, the eggplant pie even looks like it! Everything in layers, only instead of butter - sugar, instead of meat - sweet ricotta, and instead of tomato impregnation - chocolate. "

Here is the source 🔗