So one of our favorite restaurants here in Grenada is Umbrellas. We love it mainly for the fact that it is right on the water and has an amazing view of the ocean sunset and because they have a 5EC happy hour Tuesdays-Fridays. We also like going there because they have really good food. While we often praise them for being out favorite nachos on the island (although we REALLY miss SoCal’s Mexican food) but they have some really good sandwiches. We often order a grilled vegetable and a grilled fish sandwich, an order of sweet potato fries with jalapeno dip and share. It is delicious, especially with a rum and Ting to go with it.
Anyways, I got inspired by the deliciousness of those veggie sandwiches and the overabundance of eggplant in the markets to try my hand at making my own sandwich. I clearly do not have access to a grill so I decided to roast my vegetables. But ever since my discovery of the greatness of roasted eggplant, I am obsessed with incorporating it into every meal possible.
What You Need:
2-3 eggplants
2 carrots (local Grendian carrots are small, so you might need more)
3 green bell peppers
1 small onion
goat cheese (strongly recommend the cheese from Belmont Estate)
pesto sauce
salt and pepper
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
focaccia bread (I actually found some good tomato and parmesan focaccia that worked well, so you can find some)
The trickiest part of making these sandwiches is that the vegetables take different amounts of time to cook. I found that getting the carrots to be soft took way more time than the eggplant took – and of course onions and bell peppers really don’t take that long to roast. I sliced the carrots into thin, wide slices and I cut the eggplant along the diagonal to yield larger slices. I simple sliced the onions and left the bell peppers whole with only the stems removed. I first placed the carrots into a baking dish and seasoned them with sea salt, pepper, a little olive oil and some balsamic vinegar. I put the carrots into a hot oven to roast, about 400-450 degrees. I gave them about a 15 minute head start before adding the other veggies.
I added the slices carrots and bell peppers to the same dish as the carrots and gave everything a stir and added in the eggplant on a different dish. However it works with your kitchen, the goal is to wind up with all of your veggies soft.
I sliced the bell peppers into usable slices once everything came out of the oven. I had previously warmed my bread a little in the toaster oven on a low setting. To make the sandwiches, I spread pesto on each slice of bread, placed on heaping amounts of eggplant, carrots, onions and bell peppers. Then I crumbled on some goat cheese (or a lot) and presto – yummy sandwich!
If you want, you can also add some fresh sliced tomatoes or some lettuce to your sandwich too. I also found that a little drizzle of balsamic vinegar on the finished product was also good, but these are all up to you.
We were quite pleased with our try at this sandwich – it came out really good. You won’t be sad making some of these up for dinner one night.
Enjoy!