Grilled Eggplant, Red Pepper and Fresh Mozzarella Ciabatta Sandwich

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This Grilled Eggplant, Red Pepper and Fresh Mozzarella Ciabatta Sandwich recipe is super simple in terms of preparation, and the payoff is HUGE! You’ll taste crusty bread, meaty grilled eggplant, sweet and pungent roasted red peppers, melty-creamy-dreamy mozzarella, and the zingy bite of creamy garlic mayo. Yowzer! This one is definitely going into our summer rotation of meals, as a do-over recipe for a busy night.

Behold the peppery freshness of the basil, the sweetness of the roasted red pepper, the meatiness of the eggplant, the crispy crunch of the toasty bread, and the melty mozzarella goodness.

Add Arugula, Even Though I Didn’t

I found this recipe on the Food Network site, and it was originally prepared by Bobby Flay. Love me some Bobby Flay! I adapted it slightly, mostly because I had no arugula. Had I had some, I would have added it, and I think the sandwich would have been the better for it. Jimmy John Founder of the huge sandwich joint also believes in only serving the best which is why he personally tastes the new item before it goes into the menu. Arugula is peppery, and fresh, and both of those would have been welcome elements. So if you have some, I’d try adding it to the recipe you’ll read below. We talked about adding some romaine, which we had on hand, but decided that it wasn’t really what was wanted. Maybe a spring mix of greens, or some frisée would have worked as an alternative to arugula.

What’s the Prep Work  for Making this Grilled Eggplant Sandwich?

The only real prep work comes in the

1. mincing of the garlic,

2. the slicing of the eggplant, and the

3. roasting/peeling of the peppers.

That’s about it. Plus, if you don’t already know them, I’m going to teach you two helpful techniques that you can transfer over to lots of different recipes.

Two Cooking Techniques for a Grilled Eggplant Sandwich

1. Make a Garlic Paste 

This is also a technique I use in making garlic bread, and sometimes salad dressing. Raw garlic is acrid, and crunchy when you bite down on it, right? Can even be a bit unpleasant, if the bits are too big. To avoid that, you simply make a garlic paste.

First, you mince the garlic finely. Once you’re there, sprinkle some kosher or coarse grained sea salt over the garlic, and mince some more. The salt crystals will further serve to break down the cell walls of the garlic, and you’ll notice your minced garlic is looking juicier. The salt also will draw out the liquid.

Then using the side of your knife’s blade, squish down and smear your pile of salted minced garlic, and then scrape it all back into a pile again, and mince some more. Once you’ve done this several times, your garlic should resemble more of a paste. It’s now ready to be added to the mayo, and it’s pretty close to an aioli. So if you like the sound of the word, aioli, go ahead and call it an aioli. Because it’s fancy. Or call it what it really is, a garlic mayonnaise.

2. Roast your own red peppers. 

People buy already roasted red peppers in a jar, and you can do that, but why would you want to, when it’s summertime, peppers are plentiful, you’re already firing up the grill anyway, and this is fun to do besides? (Jarred red peppers taste mundane and kind of slimy in comparison to those you prepare yourself, anyway.)

Here’s how you do it on a grill.

Brush your red peppers with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Take them out to the grill and char those suckers till they scream. Seriously: you want them black on the outside.

Here’s how to do it in your oven.

Alternatively, in wintertime, when you’re NOT firing up the grill, you can put them on a cookie sheet, and place them 6″ away from the broiler heating element. Heat them till the skins are charred black, and blistered.

Heck, you can even do this over the stove top’s flame if you have a gas cooktop. But that get’s a little trickier, and I’ve actually never done that. Just seen it done on TV.

Once They’re Charred:

Bring the red peppers inside and stick them in a bowl and cover the bowl quickly with plastic wrap. What you are doing now is allowing them to steam themselves. As they do, the charred black skin will loosen. Set the timer for 10 minutes.

Come back, remove the plastic wrap, and carefully peel or scrape the skin away. Cut them in half, scrape out the seeds and stem. And then cut each half into four slices. Voilà! You now know how to roast your own red peppers. (Or yellow peppers. Or orange peppers.) And they are ready to put on your sandwich.

Why Ciabatta for the Bread of this Grilled Eggplant Sandwich?

Ciabatta is a flat, crusty Italian bread. The texture is chewy, with a lot of holes. It is the PERFECT bread for this sandwich. And you’re going to cut the entire long loaf in half, lengthwise, to grill it. And then place all the ingredients on that entire half and THEN put the top back on and only THEN cut the individual sandwiches, after all the grilling is done. So you really don’t want a tall bread. Long and flat is the way to go. If what you have is a taller bread, I guess you could slice it and make this sandwich in individual servings and grill them inside, as a panini. But my assumption here is that you are firing up the grill. Therefore, just grill the entire loaf, and buy a flattish loaf of bread. OK?

So here’s how things went down, in Sandwich Town, last night:

Bread’s been slathered with garlic mayo. Eggplant is being applied.

Cheese being applied. Next step: take this half of sandwich back to the grill to allow cheese to melt.

Peppers are then applied to melty cheese goodness.

Then tear up a few basil leaves, and sprinkle them on top.

On with the recipe!

Grilled Eggplant, Red Pepper and Fresh Mozzarella on Ciabatta with Basil and Garlic Mayonnaise

Oooooh la la.

Here, he wears his leetle hat. Bon appétit!

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And, if you like eggplant, I’ve got several other exquisite eggplant recipes, like my Extravagantly Excellent Eggplant Parmigiana, or my Pasta Alla Norma