Tuna spaghettoni in aubergines mugs, AKA the Aubergines Queen

Like a small child I cannot wait until my next bus ride for posting this, so I reckon my keyboard will be very dirty with oily fingerprints coming from my lunch by the end of it (clear indication than women are indeed multi-tasking but, sadly, not without unpredictable consequences for surrounding objects).

Please, let the bottom line of my epitaph be "Aubergines Queen", because I am sure I can establish a spiritual connection with the chatzilim/eggplants/aubergines/melanzane so that they are proactive in reaching perfection. So let's quit small talking and get straight to the point: yesterday we had a dinner with 6 girls in total, that turned out to be an excellent combination of very different people, all interesting in a different way. The menu was inspired by my secondary never-ending source of inspiration, the blog giallozafferano, and my primary never-ending source of inspiration, mum's pasta with swordfish. I decided to combine the two for this:

TUNA SPAGHETTONI IN AUBERGINES MUGS

I took one aubergine per guest and cut them in halves. I cut the upper end in cubes and emptied the lover end, also making cubes out of the inside. Sprinkle some lemon and coarse salt inside the halves and put the cubes all together to rest into salty water, so that they lose the bitter taste. After at least 30 minutes, place the halves in a baking tray and bake until tender but still in one piece (30 mins in my case). Dry the cubes and fry them in a pan with enough sunflower oil (don't be cheap with oil!), then place the cubes on paper to dry and eventually in a colander with some stone on top of them, so that they release the oil in excess. I pan-fried cherry tomatoes for five minutes with a garlic clove and EVO oil. Separately, I pan-fried tuna cubes (I could not find swordfish, and apparently it is not kosher, god knows why... literally in this case) with EVO oil for two minutes adding a glass of white wine for the last 30 seconds. Mixed the boiled spaghettoni with the aubergines, the tuna and the tomatoes, adding thyme leaves. I placed the spaghettoni inside the aubergines mugs, decorated with some more thyme and EVO oil.