The Secret Recipe Club: Roasted Tomatoes and Eggplant with Shrimp and Feta

Many, many months ago, I applied to be a member of a blog group called The Secret Recipe Club. And then I completely forgot about it. Then sometime in July, I had an email telling me a spot had finally opened up, and I was in! So this is my first SRC post, and I’m pretty excited about it!

How does the Secret Recipe Club work? Well, once a month every member is assigned another member’s blog. Shhh, it’s a secret until reveal day (today)! This month, I was assigned Double the Sugar, a blog authored by two ladies who love to cook, one in the US and one “across the pond” in Scotland! The mission is to choose a recipe from the assigned blog, make it, and share it!

Since half of Double the Sugar is written in British English, they have a handy guide with some of the differences in British & American cooking– grams versus ounces or cups, different meanings of words– are biscuits cookies or bread?

Luckily, since I spent 4 months living in Paris and traveling around Europe, I’ve picked up on many of these weird nuances. For example, I chose to make Feta Topped Roasted Prawns with Aubergine and Tomato. That’s to-MAH-to, not to-MAY-to, by the way. My best British accent.

Now, the South has somehow picked up on the word prawn– I’ll credit Louisiana’s Frenchies with that. So Nick knew that a prawn was a shrimp. Though I bet some of my Northerner friends would be at a loss. But an aubergine? Nick was clueless.

Thanks to 10 years of French classes and many a butchered British English-translated menu in France, Italy and Greece, I knew that aubergines are eggplants. And on the same note, courgettes are zucchinis. Why Americans decided they needed to make up their own words for these two particular vegetables, I do not know.

But anyways, that’s the recipe I chose to recreate. It’s full of all the Mediterranean flavors that I love and I was super excited to try it!

Roasted Tomatoes and Eggplant with Shrimp and Feta

(adapted from Double the Sugar)

• 5 tomatoes, cut into 8ths
• 1 large eggplant, cubed
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Salt & pepper
• Olive oil
• 1 lb large peeled & deveined raw shrimp
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 cup crumbled feta

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spread the tomatoes and eggplant over a rimmed baking sheet, sprinkle with garlic, salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven and stir in the raw shrimp, lemon juice and parsley. Then sprinkle the crumbled feta all over the top.

Return to the oven for 15 minutes, or until shrimp are pink and cooked through.

Serve with crusty bread for sopping up the delicious juices!

This dish was fantastic! I have to admit, I don’t always like eggplant (it’s squishy and weird and often prepared soaked in oil with breading that’s falling off), but I had a good feeling about this recipe, which is why I decided to try it. And I’m glad I did, because it was great! It’s shed a new light on eggplant for me, and I’m already thinking about making one of those Greek-type eggplant dips. This dish is perfect for the end of summer, before all the local tomatoes and eggplants are gone!