Roasted eggplants – Baker and Spice style is what I believe to be melt-in-your-mouth eggplant perfection. Good roasted eggplant is actually harder to achieve than it looks and whilst my way of making it was pretty darn good, there was some room for improvement.
You see, my original method of getting eggplants caramelized on the outside and gooey delish on the inside involves using a frying pan – which means two things: you need to watch them carefully AND your kitchen, hair, face and clothes end up smelling like fried eggplant. The other day – pre-covid-19 of course – I was at Baker and Spice, a really nice restaurant around the corner. Anyway, they had this beautifully arranged pyramid of roast eggplant that looked succulent with a yogurt sauce and pomegranate. I secretly felt sorry for the poor guys in the kitchen who probably slaved for an hour over high heat pans and oil to make this beauty come alive…but something in me made me wonder if they had a different way of doing it. So I asked.
The secret? Cut big fat slices of eggplant and place them on a large baking pan doused with oil, salt and herbs. In a hot oven. The thick slices are key, otherwise, you will get dried up eggplant which had been my previous oven-roasted experiences, thus my frying pan method. Needless to say, I ran home and tried to make it myself. They didn’t lie: we had perfect caramelized eggplant without the hassle or the smell that evening.
The nice thing is that you can serve it in many ways depending on your mood. You can also add them to sandwiches, wraps, salads, etc.
Below, you’ve got two tried and tested options – Asian style or yogurt and pomegranate – but I am sure you can come up with lots of other ones.
Ingredients
- 2 eggplants, sliced thick (around 4 cm), discarding the tops – this is key, thin slices dry up, thick slices get gooey inside
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 tsp salt
Dressings + topping
Asian
- 1/4 soy sauce
- 3 tsp fresh ginger, minced
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
- topping: 4 chopped cherry tomatoes
Yogurt and pomegranate
- 1 cup thick yogurt
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- topping: 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
Instructions
- Heat oven to 200 C
- Drizzle oil on a large baking pan
- Place eggplant slices and sprinkle with salt
- Place in hot oven for 15-20 minutes or until the bottoms turn into a slightly dark caramel color. Flip the slices, cover them with aluminium foil, place the pan back into the oven that you immediately turn off.
- Leave in the cooling oven for another 10 minutes or so. Serve with one above dressing and toppings.
