Asian Eggplant Salad Rolls (a drive-by recipe!)

errr… more like guidelines than a recipe.

Things have been pretty busy here, between cooking, baking and the new role I`ve taken on as one of a team of bloggers over at Foodie.ca (Go check it out, I`m doing blog posts on setting up a basic home bar and on getting started going gluten-free).

In the meantime, I thought I would share an appy recipe with you that turned out to be quite popular at a recent event I cooked for:  Asian Eggplant Salad rolls.  They are naturally gluten-free and are also vegan.

The inspiration for this was that classic eggplant salad you can get at some Chinese restaurants in the dog days of summer.  Its usually served cold, and the longer the eggplant has to soak up all the flavours, the better it is!

Thanks go to Jenn at Niagara Grocery here in Victoria for scoring some amazing Japanese eggplants for this dish, AND some absolutely beautiful, Metchosin-grown Hakurei turnips to round things out.

These will go down a treat, so make lots!  Even people who don`t normally like eggplant tried these, were surprised, and had seconds!

Grill Japanese eggplants until just tender, cut into 4-6 inch fingers marinate overnight in a dressing 2 parts soy sauce, 2 parts rice vinegar, 1 part sesame oil, 1 part grapeseed oil, liberal lashings of garlic and fresh ginger, scallions
Roll in rice paper with shredded Harkurei turnip and cilantro.