This is a beloved family recipes (my dad is Lebanese) so he made sure to cook us authenticly delicious meals! Below is the recipe for those interested :)
Ingredients
10-12 baby eggplant
1 lb lean ground beef
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 15 oz can of tomato sauce (we use Simple Truth)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground all-spice
1/2 cup chopped parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper (to taste)
Directions
Preheat oven to 350F. Rinse the eggplants and trim the stems, leaving the hulls.
Bring a large pot of water to boil and blanche the eggplants whole for 8-10 minutes until tender. In the meantime, toast the pine nuts until golden and set aside.
Once the eggplants have cooled, gently make an incision from the hull to the bottom of the eggplant.
OPTIONAL: Drizzle a bit of oil in a deep pan and brown the blanched eggplants in batches for 2-5 minutes then set aside (see step 7). Drizzle a bit of oil in a deep pan and sauté the diced onions until translucent.
Add in the ground beef, cinnamon, all-spice, salt, and pepper and cook until meat is well done.
Ladle a few spoons of tomato sauce into the bottom of a glass baking dish and lay the eggplants slit side up.
Spoon the spiced meat mixture into each eggplant and cover with the remaining tomato sauce. Top with half of the toasted pine nuts and half of the chopped parsley.
Cover your baking dish and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until the sauce is simmering.
To serve, garnish with remaining pine nuts and parsley next to a bed of steaming vermicelli rice.
Note: If you end up with extra meat, just spoon the remainder evenly on the top of the sauce before baking.
For those who like a visual look, here are some pictures
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