The past two Thursdays have been pretty cold here and since I don’t teach Nia on Thursdays evenings I have been cooking soup. One Thursday I had it planned so I actually did go to the store after my Nia class on Wednesday to buy the ingredients I needed, but yesterday it was cold so I just decided to use what I had, which was not much. While I think that a bowl or two of soup can easily be a meal, I like to serve something else with it. When I looked in my fridge I saw the eggplant I had bought. Yay! Perfect. I saw a recipe on icancookstuff that sounded interesting. While I do not eat spicy hot food I thought I could use the garlic and the cummin. But it turns out I don’t have any cummin. So I decided to use ginger and turmeric. I have them in powdered form so I got the bottles out of the cupboard and set them on the counter. Then I put the eggplant in the oven to bake it.
The recipe said to bake it at 200 degrees for 45 minutes.** I didn’t think I had 45 minute so I put the temperature up to 300 and left it on for 30 minutes. I didn’t feel that the eggplant was cooked enough so I turned the convection oven on and set the timer for 30 more minutes. I turned it four times because it was getting flat on the pan side.
In the meantime I was cooking my soup. I only had one bunch of baby bok choy, a bunch of kale, and some broccoli. I swore I wasn’t going to put broccoli in a soup again, but . . . I didn’t think the rest would make it. So while I was trying to fake making soup I wasn’t really paying attention to the eggplant. My soup finished before the eggplant.
By the time I finally thought the eggplant was cooked enough to split I split it. I was thinking that I would make one half for me and one half for my husband. I salted it, I put a bit of garlic on it, I put a little bit of parmesan cheese on it. Then I looked over and I saw the onions I had chopped to put on it. And the kale. So I decided to put the onions and kale on one half and hubby and I would just get a half of each half making a whole half.
I put it back in the oven and let it bake for a bit more. Half way through the end of baking portion I saw the ginger and turmeric on the counter. Snap! I forgot to put it on. So I sprinkled a little turmeric on both halves. I put the broiler on for about 10 minutes.
Here is the result.
From the time I thought to cook the eggplant to the time I put it in the oven to finish baking I had thought of three different ways to flavor it. I had originally thought to use garlic, turmeric, and ginger, then I thought of garlic, onions, and kale, then I thought of garlic, and cheese. That really is not a big deal the big deal is that I forgot one each time I thought of the new one. Geez! What I ended up with was ok. I think it needed a little bit more flavor. I will work on that. I don’t even think I tasted the turmeric.
I like cooking eggplant this way because it is much less time-consuming than turn the slices all the time. But I think I like the roasted slices better. But I will continue to experiment with this. I might try slicing it into three pieces next time. Although a baked eggplant is not easy to slice.
**It just dawned on me that the 200 degrees was probably Celsius and not Fahrenheit. So it would actually be about 400 degrees F. Ha!
I can’t wait to try this again!
What do you think of this way of cooking eggplant? What would you put on the eggplant?
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