With my first four homegrown tomatoes, my favorite summer harvest supper!



Ingredients (as I made this skillet - all negotiable quantities):

1 modest-sized eggplant
1 yellow onion
4 small zucchini
3 medium tomatoes
1 sweet red pepper
1/2 cup oil (I used half olive, half peanut)
salt
2 t minced garlic
40 leaves fresh basil (less is OK, not fresh not so OK)
1 t fresh dill
1 t fresh chives

Peel eggplant and slice into 1/2 inch slices. Salt and stack the slices to sweat out bitterness. Let them sweat while prepping the rest.

Chop onion. Add oil to large skillet, dump the onion in to clear the cutting board. Don't add heat just yet.

Chop pepper and zucchini. All the veggies get chopped to about 1/2 inch chunks.

Turn on heat to give onions a head start cooking.

Blot the sweated eggplant with a paper towel, and chop.

Add garlic to oil and onions and sprinkle with salt. Stir. Dump cutting board contents into skillet. Sprinkle a little salt and stir, leaving it to simmer.

Chop tomatoes. Dump cutting board into skillet again. Salt and stir. Put a lid on the skillet and let it simmer.

Chop herbs. Dump into skillet again & stir.  Simmer another 10 minutes or so. This is a stew, not a stir-fry - let the flavors cook together. Adjust final salting, or leave that for the table.

Serve with bread as a single-dish summer supper. With all those sweet vegetables, this almost serves as dessert as well.