Smoky Eggplant & Roasted Red Pepper Dip With Celery

This recipe is inspired by Rocco Dispirito's cookbook, The Negative Calorie Diet. 

Now, I'm not looking into other diets at all but I'm always looking at recipes to get ideas.

And, I LOVE to read.  I've skimmed this book but haven't read it in its entirety yet.  

There is some good information in here though and I'll share some of that on another post.  

When I was skimming this book, which I of course got at the local library, I saw this picture for eggplant dip.

He had used the eggplant shell as we sometimes do with spaghetti squash as a shell, stuffing it with all that good stuff.  

I changed this recipe and I'm giving you my version here.  You might want to checkout his book for his version.  

Ingredients

2 medium to large eggplants

1 cup roasted red peppers(I buy them already roasted in a jar)

1 1/2 tsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp corriander

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp cumin

Dash of chipotle smoked red jalepenos(you can easily substitute cayenne)

Salt to taste

Instructions

Start by washing and then cutting the eggplant lengthwise in half.  Then use a knife to make a cross hatch pattern going 1/2-1 inch in depth.  

Sprinkle the cut side of the eggplant with salt and then lay face down on a hot grill sprayed with cooking oil to prevent sticking.  I used my grill pan.  You're only going to cook this 3 minutes or so on high heat on each side until a slight char forms.  

Here's what mine looked like.  

After place the eggplant cut side down on a plate and microwave on high for 4-5 minutes.  

Scoop out the pulp leaving 1/4 inch of pulp remaining to give the shell some stability.  

Place into a food processor along with all your spices and red pepper and blend until smooth.  

Rocco's recipe didn't call for red pepper at all.  I was just craving it.  My taste buds were leading me while I cooked.  

I had enough of the dip to fill one half of one eggplant shell and then a small dish of leftover.  

We had this as an appetizer for our Valentine's Day dinner at home.  

As Rocco did, I used a few of the leaves from the celery as a garnish on top.  I thought it was really pretty.

I will tell you honestly that when I cooked the second eggplant I skipped the grilling and just did the cross hatch scoring and microwaved it and it was just fine.  It saves time and saves you having to clean another dish or grill.  

Here's what you'll love~

Fantastic taste, all 0 pt foods used, relatively easy to find ingredients and easy to make, and it's visually appealing!

You may laugh that I'm always talking about my food being pretty but I think it's important.  My husband always says I'm a sucker for packaging and I don't think I'm alone in that.  

It's important to make your meals look appealing because you're more likely to be satisfied.  

Just because we're choosing to eat healthier foods doesn't mean we shouldn't get excited about them.  Vegetables and fruits are gorgeous!  So much better than the dull, monochromatic look of fast food.

Happy Cooking!