Eggplant stuffed with mince beef

This is one of my favourite dishes I have to say, because you can stuff with whatever you want.

This time I stuffed with mince beef but sometimes I only use veggies or mushrooms. Eggplant is a vegetable that allow us to be creative as much as we want. Is also a nice dish to stuff with left overs :)

I started to prepare eggplants like this when I was living in Portugal and I usually stuffed with some vegetarian sausages that I could find in the supermarket there. In here I started to use mince beef as I recently started to eat red meat again.
After several years without eating red meat, I find this recipe a nice way to eat beef without tasting the strong flavour that red meat has.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggplants
• 300 grams of mince beef (already prepared in your favourite way) 
• Half can of organic peeled tomato or 2 ripe medium tomatoes 
• 3 tbsp of olive oil 
• 1 medium onion
• 1 tsp of dried thyme
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Parmesan cheese (optional)

Let's do it:

• Pre-heat the oven to 150 C, gas Mark 6
• Wash the egg plants and cut them into half. Gently remove the inside of the eggplant as much as possible. Pay attention that if you try to remove until the edge of the skin, it would break after cooking
• To a pot chop the onion and pour the olive oil. Bring it to medium heat and simmer until the onion is smooth
• Add the peeled tomato and the dried thyme
• Cut in pieces the eggplant that was removed from the skin and add it to the pot. Turn the heat to minimum. Add salt and pepper and let it cook until really smooth, almost falling apart. If it starts to be dry you can add 1/3 cup of water or white wine (When I have white wine I prefer to use it as it increases the flavour)
• When the eggplant is soft, use a hand blender and blend it until puree
• Pour it into a bowl and add the mince meat (previously cooked). Mix it well
• Pour the mix into each half of the eggplant and cover it with grated parmesan (optional). I use parmesan as it is a hard cheese with low concentration of lactose 
• Place them in the oven for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the skin of eggplant is soft
• Serve it with salad or some roasted vegetables. I usually use the heat of the oven to roast some veggies while the eggplant is cooking. Makes it easier 

Note - If you want any advice of how to prepare mince beef, just let me know because is pretty simple and I can help you.

Bon apetit :)

Time of preparation: 45 minutes (30 minutes preparing the eggplant + 25 minutes in the oven)
I am considering that the mince beef was already prepared, if not you can prepare it while you prepare the eggplant, it doesn't really take long time

A perfect album to listen while preparing this dish is Massive Attack. Is a band from UK that started is late 80's and is still going on. They have cool albums and for me the best ones are Blue Lines, Mezzanine and Heligoland.
Is hard to chose one song as I like several.

Have a nice day and remember that today is a perfect day to be happy :) so go for it!