Eggplant . . . not my favorite food, but WOW – this turned out great. And unexpectedly easy. I read somewhere years ago that it improves the stringent feeling of eggplant if it is salted and drained before cooking/roasting it. Sometimes I even remember to do this.
For this particular dish, I remembered. I diced a medium-sized eggplant into small bits and then sprinkled them generously with salt and put them back into the refrigerator. After a couple of hours, I drained off the brown fluid. Turned out we weren’t hungry enough that night for a whole new batch of food, so I just fixed up one of our famous melange meals that we are so fond of.
Next day: Well I can’t remember why, but I didn’t fix it that evening either. I just drained off the accumulated brown liquid, and put it back into the refrigerator.
Last night, I dragged it out, again drained off the liquid, and scraped it into the frying pan to brown a bit. I added chopped leftover roast beef, onion, peppers, fresh salsa, chopped fresh tomatoes, and one slice of precooked, crispy bacon. Then I cooked it for about half an hour, and then sprinkled in some Italian-type seasonings to taste.
The mini penne cooked fairly quickly and I grated up some mozzarella cheese for sprinkling on top. I guess at this point, it would qualify to be ratatouille, or maybe Eggplant Parmesan.
I tend to like sour cream on this sort of dish, so I didn’t put either cheese on mine, leaving it all for DH to slather on his. Rightly I guess I should have run the cheese-topped dish under the broiler to top brown the cheese, but I didn’t, and it was delicious as it was!
Adventures of Dorrie Anne 
they use a lot of eggplant in Greek food, too, I love it, too, virtual hugs, Mitza
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