I've been finding all kinds of good eggplant recipes lately. This one is from Cooking Light, September 2009 and is my Magazine Mondays entry for this week. I made this recipe for the first time soon after that issue came out, but I made the mistake of using whole grain hulled barley, which is fine if you're just simmering it in a pot of water, but not so good for something like risotto, which requires lots of attention and stirring. It took forever to cook - we actually ended up losing patience and eating it while the barley was still a bit raw...not so good.
I remembered the recipe recently, and decided to give it another try. This time I followed the instructions, and used pearled barley. I made a couple substitutions to the other ingredients though - I didn't have enough pine nuts around, so I used a mixture of pine nuts and sliced almonds. I also substituted summer squash for half the eggplant (needed to get through the excess of squash in the fridge), and was quite happy with the result. This dish came out really good - full of summer vegetables, with a great mixture of fragrant basil, crunchy nuts, and creamy cheese on top.
