Eggplant Spirals With Greek Yogurt, Tomatoes, and Cucumber
The spirit of warmer days and lighter eating led me to Vietnamese summer rolls last week, but it's really Greek food that I associate the most with this idyllic weather. Having spent a great deal of my life in a Greek heavy enclave of Queens, I found the bright, fresh flavors of Greek foods to be the perfect compliment to being outside on a pleasant, sunny day. Those flavors served as the influence for these eggplant spirals with yogurt, tomatoes, and cucumber that aren't a traditional Greek dish, but bring together a lot of what makes Greek food so fitting in this beautiful spring weather.
Any roll needs to start with a vessel for stuffing, and in this case I went with eggplant, whose long shape and easy pliability after being grilled make it an ideal candidate for the task. If you venture back in the archives here, you'll probably find me recommending to salt your eggplant before grilling. This technique helps draw moisture from the fruit which can be helpful in achieving a soft and creamy texture in roasting scenarios, but after side-by-side testing, I found the high heat of the grill is enough to draw moisture out on its own and pre-salting isn't a necessity.
Give me a bowl of tzatziki and warm, soft pita, and I'll down the whole thing in no time. I wanted to bring that addictive cucumber-yogurt sauce into these rolls, but since I planned on using larger cucumber chunks later on, I modified this filling to serve a slightly different purpose.
I still started it with a tangy Greek yogurt base and gave it a squeeze of lemon and fresh herbs by way of oregano, mint, and dill. This didn't make it taste fully flavored though, but some garlic helped with that, and then grated feta, which gave the sauce the saltiness it was missing.
To pair with the sauce and give the rolls substantialness, I relied on a very simple mixture of cucumbers and tomatoes, which I cut into a 1/4-inch dice.
Next I moved grill-side, where I brushed the eggplant slices with olive oil and gave them a light seasoning of salt and pepper before placing them over the fire. The high heat quickly turned the stiff eggplant into thin, flexible slices with a beautiful char.
Once off the grill, I covered each eggplant slice with the yogurt sauce, followed by the addition of a single layer of cucumber and tomato atop, and then rolled 'em up.
The herbs in the sauce went a long way to give these rolls a distinctly Greek flavor that was further enhanced by the tangy yogurt and salty feta. The vegetables delivered an extra hit of freshness and added a pleasing textural contrast to the creamy yogurt and soft eggplant that gave these rolls the exact light and refreshing feeling I associate with Greek food, which now that it's warm out, is something I'll likely be eating a lot more of.
