My Georgia Monday: Eggplant with Cheese and Yogurt

Last week's eggplant medley kick started my eggplant craving and since then I made three more eggplant dishes (will post each in my Mondays series).  Again and again, I am using Darra Goldstein's recipes (with slight variations) from her book The Georgian Feast.  By the way, this book won The Julia Child Cookbook Award Book of The Year in 1994.  

Eggplant with Cheese and Yogurt

2 medium or large eggplants
olive oil
8 oz feta cheese, crumbled
1 hard-boiled egg, mashed
1/2 stick butter, softened substitute with olive oil, it even tastes better
yogurt to taste

Preheat oven to 500 F.  Trim the ends from eggplants, cut them lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds (save the seeds for eggplant caviar- the recipe coming up next Monday).  Place the eggplants in a greased baking dish and brush the cut surfaces with olive oil.  Bake for 15 min.
Meanwhile, stir the cheese and the hard-boiled egg into the softened butter.
Remove the eggplant from the oven and reduce the heat to 350 F .  Stuff the cavities of the eggplant with the cheese mixture and return to the oven.  Bake 45 min more.
Serve with a pitcher of beaten yogurt to pour over the eggplant.
I like Fage Total 0 % yogurt.  For this dish, I added little water and salt to my yogurt (Fage is very think, almost like sour cream). 

 

I topped this with a slice of tomato and served with Awesome and Easy Creamy Corn Casserole from allrecipes.com.

here is an updated photo: eggplant with cheese and yogurt served on crackers with a slice of tomato

(8/1/11 edit)