One skillet, thirty-five minutes, and a plate with real weight to it: browned eggplant, tender bulgur, canned lentils, toasted walnuts and crumbled feta. It serves four and carries 14.2 grams of fiber a portion. Good for a night when you want dinner to feel substantial without a second pan going.
Diced eggplant drinks that first tablespoon of oil in about ten seconds and then sits there looking like it needs more. It does not. Keep the heat up, leave the pieces alone between stirs, and the eggplant gives the oil back as it collapses and turns golden. Reach for the bottle at that point and you get something greasy instead.
Use medium or coarse bulgur. The fine grind is a five-minute grain and would be paste by minute twelve. The lentils go in only at the end, warming through with the walnuts and feta rather than softening in a second simmer. Between the feta and the broth there is plenty of salt in the pan already, so taste before you add any.
