Mushroom eggplant, the video recipe of the delicious Neapolitan dish!

Mushroom eggplants are the perfect recipe for a tasty side dish. Quick to prepare, they are suitable to accompany many main courses.

Mushroom eggplants are a classic and tasteful side dish, perfect not only with meat dishes, eggs, cold cuts and cheeses, but also to be "interpreted" as a single dish, perhaps accompanied by very hot croutons on which you have rubbed some fresh garlic. What are we talking about? It is actually a simple dish of fried eggplant and seasoned with tomato . The origin of the name seems to be due to the appearance that aubergines take on after cooking, when they become – in fact – similar to mushrooms .

In the Neapolitan tradition (this recipe is, in fact, of Neapolitan origin) they are called mulignane a fungitiello and are often also used as a condiment for pasta , as well as as an empty-fridge idea.
Also known as aubergines with mushrooms, in their classic recipe they are fried, but if you want you can try a less tasty recipe, cooking the aubergines in the oven. Furthermore, although the most popular variant is the tomato one, there are also white ones. Let's see how to do it!

How to cook mushroom eggplants

1. To prepare this aubergine side dish following the original recipe, start cutting the vegetables into cubes .
2. Heat the sunflower oil and fry the eggplant cubes, then drain them with a slotted spoon and let them dry well from the excess oil .
3. Now cut the coppery tomatoes into cubes, and cook them in a pan in which you have browned two peeled and well crushed cloves of garlic in extra virgin olive oil. Cook for a few minutes, adding enough salt.
4. Now, add the fried eggplant too. Add plenty of fresh basil, chopped by hand , so that its aroma goes to perfume the vegetables.
5. Season with salt and cook the vegetables with the tomatoes for another couple of minutes, to mix all the flavors together . Enjoy your meal!

Some versions provide for purging the salted aubergines for about an hour before preparation. However, it is not essential: we have tried to offer you a quick and easy recipe ready in the shortest possible time .

If you wish, add some hot pepper , for a taste more faithful to the tradition of southern Italy.
Don't have fresh tomatoes at home? You can also use canned tomatoes , but the taste will lose a little.

Baked mushroom eggplant

Do you want a light alternative? Let's also see how to make non-fried mushroom eggplants: the ingredients are the same, but cooking is much less caloric .

1. First, cut the aubergines into cubes (the smaller they are, the faster they will cook) after washing them carefully.
2. Arrange on a baking sheet – without salt – well spaced and bake in a preheated oven at 180 ° C for about 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, cut the tomatoes into cubes and cook them in a pan with a drizzle of oil and a clove of garlic. When the aubergines are cooked, add them to the pan and cook everything together for another 5 minutes with herbs, salt and pepper.
4. At this point, the flavors will have mixed well: serve and enjoy hot. You will see that even the light mushroom eggplants are tasty and flavourful . Enjoy your meal!

For another side dish with aubergines, we suggest the fried aubergines !

White mushroom eggplant

The white eggplant recipe is less popular than the red tomato one, but still noteworthy .

1. To prepare them, dip the irregular cubes of eggplant in the pan, where you have sautéed a little garlic and oil.
2. Cook covered for about 15 minutes ; then add the basil and other aromas to taste and after 5 minutes, enjoy them!

storage

Keep them in the fridge (covered with plastic wrap or in an airtight container) for a couple of days . Have you done too many? In this case you can freeze them in convenient single portions and enjoy them even in winter.
Alternatively, the day after preparation, they become an excellent sauce for pasta: drain it al dente, directly in a pan with your aubergines with tomato, and mix the flavors for a minute. Here is our complete recipe for making pasta with mushroom eggplants !

Finally, we leave you all our recipes with aubergines : try them all!