So, here’s the deal: I don’t really like eggplant. But I got one in my little local farm box recently and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to practice the “all veggies are good if you just know how to cook them well” theory. I had plans to share my grand triumph with all of you and then we would all live on as better people for now being able to like eggplant. 

What’s that saying? Humans make plans and God laughs? Well, I hope She got a good chuckle over this one. 

I’m going to tell you how I cooked it, because it wasn’t completely terrible. But I am also going to ask that if anyone really knows how to cook eggplant so that it tastes GREAT, please let us know. I think we (I) can do better…

Ingredients: 

1 Eggplant

A little bit of olive oil 

Salt 

Pepper

Directions: 

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

2. Cut eggplant into small pieces

3. Drizzle with olive oil, mix and sprinkle with salt and pepper

4. Cook in the oven for 20 ish minutes (my eggplant was rather small, so 20 minutes was plenty. With a larger eggplant I would check it around 20 minutes and maybe mix it around so it gets a little crispy on all the sides.)

5. Hide it as well as you can and eat.

My original plan was to add this roasted eggplant to a rockin’, chunky spaghetti sauce. However, when I went to my cupboard I was fresh out of my usual saucy ingredients. So I added the eggplant as a pasta topping with a jar of Arrabiata sauce. It honestly wasn’t that great. I think it would taste much better in a garden sauce. 

It did taste pretty good the next day mixed into a big salad. My conclusion so far is that eggplant is ok if it’s cooked decently and hidden pretty well. Again, I’m open to being persuaded otherwise. Here’s hoping…

Originally posted September 15, 2021.