1st Recipe of 2011: Tortang Talong (Eggplant Omelet)

I was craving it for a bit and I totally forgot to ask my mom to make it when she was here on vacay so I decided I should finally make some Tortang Talong. Tortang talong is a Filipino dish and is basically a grilled eggplant omelet with some meat. It's great any time of the day and who knew that eggplants and eggs would make such a great combo?! (Filipinos did! lol!)

My ingredient list:
-a couple of long eggplants (best to go to an Asian market for this!)
-depending on how many eggplants you have, two eggs per eggplant
-1/3 pound of ground beef or so depending on how much meat you like (I use ground beef instead of the usual ground pork because you know that I don't eat pork or you could just leave this part out if you like)
-veggie oil
-black pepper
-salt (or garlic salt)




1) The first step is to grill the eggplants until all of the skin is brown, wrinkly, and a little bit burned. I don't have a grill so I used our oven's broiler and broiled it for about 5-7 minutes until it was brown and fully wrinkly.



2) While the eggplants are in the oven, I scrambled two eggs per eggplant in separate bowls and I seasoned it with salt and pepper. I added the ground beef raw if you can see the pink spots in the bowls because I was lazy but that was a stupid idea and should've browned them a bit, seasoned it, and added it to the eggplant and eggs later (you'll see what I mean later).



3) When the eggplants are done, you should let it cool to work with it again (unlike impatient me who burned her hands on the hot eggplant!). Then, using a fork, peel off and throw away the eggplant skin to reveal the inside (or eat it if you like but I think they remove it because it's not good after being grilled; idk). After removing the skin, spread the inside "fibers" of the eggplant as above because allows for greater egg-eggplant ratio in the omelet (or something like that! lol!).



4) Turn on the stove and let it warm up a bit before putting a few tablespoons of veggie oil. Let the oil heat up a bit before laying the eggplant on the pan and pouring the eggs on top. Then you should pour the cooked ground beef of top and let it cook a bit before carefully flipping over.



5) Because the meat was raw, I had to ruin my nice omelet shape on the first and second eggplant because I needed to break it up and make sure that the meat wasn't pink anymore (who wants a pink omelet??). This is why you need already-cooked meat.



6) On my third eggplant, I let it sit on its back longer to cook the meat and tried to flip it and create the nice omelet shape typical of this dish, but it flipped to shape like an American omelet! Oh well! I'll show you the next time I crave this dish!



7) To top this whole recipe off, the one and only condiment to use is Banana ketchup! I know it sounds weird but it's like a cross between regular ketchup and sweet and sour sauce found in Chinese restaurants! Try it! It's really good!  And good luck when trying out this recipe! I will post more soon!

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