You know I just love, love, love, my babies, each and every one of them. They are
all my favourites! I’m talking about my daycare babies! They bring me such joy.
I love it when Jamie Daddia crawls over to me and pulls himself up by my hair.
He holds my face in his tiny little hands and smiles the most heart-melting smile
imaginable, while intermittently chucking up his milk. I love it when Sylvie clark
bursts through the door with a radiant smile, just as she has every morning since
day one. I don’t think I have ever seen that child not beaming. I love it when
Abby Gordon comes out of her shell during rhyme time and dances like no one is
watching, or at cooking time, when Alexander Walsh is bursting at the seams,
trying to contain himself as he waits patiently for his turn to pour and mix the
ingredients. But my favourite time is story time, when I read to all of them and
they are sitting on the edge of their seats, riveted, waiting to find out who sank
the boat? Or where can the green ship be? I could inhale them all…
But sadly a lot of my time these days is taken up with paperwork, (if there are
any teachers out there they will know what I'm talking about) which keeps me
from my babies. My time is pretty much taken up with my working with children,
paperwork and housework. And now I have managed to turn cooking dinners for
my family into a production bigger than Ben Hur since I started my Facebook
group.
But when I made this dish it was different because I didn’t just want to make a
super-healthy meal for my kids, I wanted to make something pretty; not because
it’s someone birthday or a special occasion; I wanted to make it because I FELT
LIKE IT! (Gasp!) I don’t know who else feels the way I do, but unless I’m being
productive I feel like I’m wasting time. And that day I just didn’t want to do
paperwork or the laundry or the dishes or the shopping, I just wanted to make
something for the love of it. DO YOU KNOW HOW GUILTY I FELT! But I went
ahead and did it anyway.
This dish is really simple to make, and if you love eggplant this is for you! All you
have to do is bake the eggplant and mushrooms, make a béchamel sauce and mix
them all together. Who would have thought that they would go together so well
but it turned out better then well, it turned out UBER well.
To make it look pretty is a different story. Making things look pretty has NEVER
been my forte (but I have been working on it really hard). Making them look
pretty simple for the sake of it is downright counterintuitive for me; so I was
really going out of my comfort zone. Hence the name ‘guilty pleasure’.
Ingredien3 eggplants (medium size500g white cup mushrooms sliced
1 tablespoon of Italian herbs
Salt and pepper to taste
Paper towel
400g egg pasta
1-2 cloves garlic crushed
Béchamel sauce
Ingredients
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons
2 ½ cups milk
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup grated cheese (optional ) - Please don’t be overly generous with your cheese as it makes the sauce very thick and not easily mixed into pasta. If this quantity is too much just halve the ingredients.
Method
Heat oven to 200c
1. Wrap eggplants in aluminium foil and bake in the oven for the first 30 min
on 200c then reduce heat to 180c and bake for another for 2-2 1/2 hours.
2. On a couple of large baking dishes covered in baking paper, arrange
mushrooms, sprinkle with Italian herbs, salt and pepper.
3. Bake in the oven for literally 5 minutes
4. Roll out baking paper on a large dry surface
5. Take mushrooms out of the oven and place on top of paper towels to
absorb the moisture.
6. When eggplant is cooked through (can take up to three hours) take out of
the oven and peel the skin, drain off any excess fluids.
7. Place in a bowl and mix with garlic.
Béchamel sauce
Method
1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour and cook, stirring
constantly until turns into a paste. Add milk slowly while continuing to
stir
2. As the sauce thickens, bring it to a boil, add salt and pepper to taste, lower
the heat and stir for another two minutes remove from the heat.
3. If adding cheese add it now
4. Mash the eggplant with a fork and stir into the béchamel sauce. Add the
mushrooms
5. Boil pasta, drain and mix with eggplant mixture and mushrooms. Serve
with salad or you can grill chicken breast and add to the dish.
Simple and delicious!
Enjoy,
Nava
PS - I love hearing from you! Let me know how it went and feel free to share your pictures.
