Roasted Aubergines With Sheep’s Milk Yoghurt
I have been keeping with my quest of cooking and eating more vegetables, and this roasted aubergines recipe is one more delicious step in that general direction.
Hey Donna in Rathmines is one of my favourite restaurants. I eat there regularly and one of my favourite dishes is their roasted aubergines. This is a dish that makes me want to eat but more importantly it made me want to cook with aubergines. That was new.
As you know, I’m a big fan of middle eastern food and here’s a previous recipe for roasted vegetables.
Aubergines are one of those odd vegetables which I’ve never been too sure how to handle. They make for a tasty dip but that’s not quite the same as eating the vegetable in its original form. This roasted aubergines recipe is quite an exciting one I feel. It makes the best of the eggplant as the yanks call it and it uses glorious Velvet Cloud, an Irish sheep’s milk yoghurt made in county Mayo.
This roasted aubergines dish needs to be served with a bowl of greens on the side. It will help lift it. I serve it with a simple lettuce dressed with lots of herbs and maybe some scallions or green peppers. Alternatively, I have served it with a korean style spinach salad and it worked really well.
Ingredients
- One aubergine per person
- olive oil
- chili flakes
- One small pot of sheep’s milk yoghurt (a good tanguy greek style yoghurt will work too if you can’t fine the sheep’s milk stuff).
- One bunch of scallions
- Fresh herbs of your liking. I used a combination of mint, parsley and dill
- One small garlic clove
- Salt and Pepper
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 150C
- Cut the aubergines in their length and season them with some salt and chili flakes to taste. Drizzle heavily with extra virgin olive oil.
- Cook the aubergines for a good hour. Check on them and if they’re a bit dry add a bit more oil. Cover them with tin foil and cook them for an extra half hour.
- When you take them out they should be really soft and fully cooked through.
- In a small bowl mix half a large tub of the velvet cloud, shredded herbs, a grated garlic cloves and salt and pepper to taste.
- Sprinkle the chopped scallion on top.
Extra: if you wanted a bit more crunch you could toast some hazelnuts and chop them up roughly on top. Alternatively you could have some pomegranate seeds.
