Party Canapés: Eggplant and Ricotta Involtini

Over the past few weeks I've shown you how to be the rockstar of your next holiday party with a fried bite and a light bite, this week I'm going for indulgent with this involtini stuffed with fresh ricotta.

Rich and creamy it involves fresh ricotta rolled in a velvety eggplant wrapper, punctuated with fragrant Meyer lemons and verdant parsley. It's definitely not for the calorie conscious, but with the festive atmosphere of the holidays and inevitable weight-loss resolutions in the new year, I'm all for a little bit of excess.

If the word ricotta conjures images of dry curds that taste like crusty plaster, you've probably never made your own ricotta. When freshly made, ricotta is like a rich creamy mascarpone but since there's no fermentation involved it tastes like a concentrated version of the milk you made it from. That's why it's important to use rich, flavorful milk. I used a flash-pasteurized milk from a small local dairy and it took all the restraint I could muster to keep myself from eating all of it with some honey and pine nuts.

Because both the eggplant and ricotta are rather rich, I like to add some lemon zest and parsley to keep the involtini from crossing the line from creamy to cloying. On that note, I know someone is going to ask, so Ill just address it now: roasting the eggplants in the oven won't work. On my first few tests, I tried roasting the eggplants for various lengths of time at various temperatures, but what I ended up with was either tough and stringy or dried out and chewy.

For thin slices of eggplant like this you need a heat source thats able to transfer heat fast enough to cook the eggplant through before it has a chance to dry out. That means steaming, boiling or frying. The first two options will keep the eggplant moist, but will also make it watery, leaving the third choice as the best option.

I happened to find some mini Japanese eggplants that were about 4.5 inches long, which is what I used to make these. If you end up using regular Japanese or Chinese eggplants just cut them in half before slicing them lengthwise.