Goat Cheese, My Savior

Last week, inspired by the newest issue of Cooking Light, I decided to try something I'd never worked with before: eggplant. (Vegetarians of the world, feel free to gasp in horror.) I did a really easy eggplant sandwich on ciabatta bread, with roasted eggplant and bell pepper, arugula, pesto and goat cheese. It was amazing! And here's why: goat cheese could make cardboard taste delicious.
I'm not saying that the eggplant tasted like cardboard, cause it didn't. It was actually pretty good, and even my carnivorous husband, who grunted and grumbled about blasphemy when a meatless sandwich came to the table, liked it enough to tell his mom about it. But let's face it, a sandwich built around three different vegetables is bound to be a little daunting to anyone who's not a vegetarian. The great thing about eggplant is its texture. It's really thick and meaty, sort of like a portabella mushroom without the slime factor. The bell pepper really added a dimension as well; it gave a bit of a deeper flavor to the sandwich. I blackened it and left the skin on, which added a smoky (well, burnt) flavor that went well with the brightness of the arugula, the heavy basil in the pesto, and the heavenly, heavenly tart creaminess of the goat cheese. The one caveat I will add is, if you are planning to make this, make sure you get a wide, wide loaf of ciabatta. Ours was shaped like a small French loaf, and the eggplant fell further out of the sandwich at every bite. Annoying, especially when the sandwich is a good one.
We drank a red wine that night, mostly because that's all we had, and I was surprised at how well it complemented the sandwich. I was a firm believer in basil and cheese being unsuitable with anything but a red until my brother in law Thomas (who's working on his sommelier certification) brought me a glass of a very full bodied, oaky chardonnay to drink with a goat cheese appetizer once. It really went well with the cheese, cutting through the tartness and matching the creaminess of each bite. So my first inclination would be to serve such a wine, but as good chardonnays are expensive and bad chardonnays are really, really bad, I think it would go just as well with a lighter-bodied, easy-drinking red. We had Napa River's Merlot (available at Trader Joe's) which is truly not like most merlots, and therefore went well with the flavors. A nice pinot noir would be good, maybe a syrah or shiraz. I dunno. What you basically want to avoid with a meal like this is any big wine with lots of jam, because it will kill your taste buds and will not allow you to taste the various complexities of the sandwich. That's my wisdom. Please feel free to discard it at will, or correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm going to try my hand at quinoa tonight, so check back for an update later.
Also, I'm drinking one of my favorite white wines of all time, so be prepared for a long, gushing post about the various joys of truly delicious white wine.