Here's something nice I made. I suppose it's in the same general family as ratatouille, but it's different enough. It's delicious cold; we had half for dinner last night and half for lunch this morning. Admittedly I am fonder than many people of various sorts of sludgy eggplant (in my view the main thing you can do wrong with an eggplant is to fail to cook it enough), but I think you will like this, too.

SLUDGE IT UP:
Cut an eggplant (1 pound) into 1" or slightly larger cubes. Toss with salt and put in a colander to weep out their juices.

Meanwhile, slowwwwly saute 2 sizable onions, chopped fine

in

2 T salted butter and 1 T olive oil

Somewhere in here you can turn the oven on to 400° F. When the onions are soft and beginning to turn just the tiniest touch gold, turn up the heat to medium and add

2 cloves garlic, minced
Some chopped marjoram or thyme

Saute another couple of minutes and remove from heat. If you cooked the onions slowly enough, at least half an hour should have passed by now, in which case you can rinse the eggplant briefly in cold water and give them a gentle squeeze to get a bit more liquid out.

Now lightly oil your gratin dish and spread the onion mixture over the bottom. Put the eggplant in a rough layer over that and over the top place a single layer of sliced ripe tomato OR about 3/4 of a cup of chopped canned tomatoes. You can leave this alone or add some thinly sliced artichoke hearts, if you have them -- frozen are nice, or if you have the marinated kind, you should give them a very good rinse before you slice them.

Cover and bake for 45 minutes. Peek inside after about 35 minutes. If things are looking too liquid, take the cover off for the last 10 minutes.