Eggplant Involtini (Rollatini)

Bubbly, cheesy, warm and comforting but light enough for summer, this eggplant involtini is the perfect dish for any season.

In a little town in the South of France that we’ve been fortunate to visit several times over the years is a tiny neighborhood Italian restaurant. A family-run establishment, the simple menu features homestyle dishes prepared by the wife while her husband runs the front of house engaging the customers, even sitting to chat with the regulars, switching fluidly between French, Italian and American-accented English (he worked in New York City for a time).

The bistro’s chicken involtini is a visitor favorite so it’s regularly listed as a daily special. Pounded chicken rolled with prosciutto, spinach and cheese, it’s served with a light sauce and steamed vegetables. While that simple, memorable chicken dish has only one or two ingredients in common with my recipe, it gets all the credit for inspiring this eggplant involtini.

Involtini or roulade (or rollatini as we Americans call it) is a rolled, stuffed dish that can be meat or vegetable based. Involtini, by definition, are little bundles of food but in this case, I’ve generously stuffed eggplant slices with a ricotta/spinach mixture before rolling them and baking them with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and pesto sauce, making them more appropriate for a main course.

This baked dish, in all its bubbly, cheesy goodness, might not be anyone’s first choice for a summer meal but the season has so far been a mild one. The cooler evenings still sometimes call for something heartier than a big salad but not too heavy or fussy as to require a lot of time preparing it.

I use jarred tomato sauce (Rao’s is my favorite) to keep things simple and rather than frying the eggplant slices as tradition calls for, they’re baked in the oven just long enough to make them soft enough to roll. The ricotta-spinach filling uses frozen spinach and the pesto sauce–my ode to summer–was frozen leftovers from a few weeks ago.

Think of this eggplant involtini as a lighter version of eggplant parmigiana since the vegetable isn’t breaded and fried but the comfort factor is all here. The pesto sauce adds a layer of flavor that I really like…same with the spinach. The extra green components balance the cheese but you can skip one or both if you like. If you are open to using meat, add prosciutto to the mix by either rolling a slice with the eggplant or by topping the dish with chopped, fried prosciutto or pancetta. As is, though, this involtini/rollatini/roulade is plenty flavorful and makes for a satisfying dish for all seasons. I wonder if my favorite Italian family in the South of France would approve…