Guest Post: Pan-Mediterranean Baked Eggplant

Kay & Nigel team up again!!

This recipe is modified from Nigel Slater's "Simple Baked Aubergine" in his wonderful book Tender Vol. 1. My biggest adjustments (which aren't very big) are adding measurements. Also, in the original Nigel uses plain old paprika and fresh mint, and recommends using sheep yogurt. I didn't have any of those things on hand.

Ingredients:

2 eggplants
olive oil (2 1/2 Tbsp.)
sea salt
garlic (4 cloves)
greek style yogurt (approx. 1 cup)
pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika)
one Moroccan mint spice teabag (or alternatively, dried mint and cinnamon)

First, preheat the oven to 400F. Slice off the tops of the eggplants and then slice them lengthwise into halves. Slash the flesh on the cut face into a lattice pattern, as deep as you can without cutting the skin. Drizzle the slashed sides with olive oil and give them a sprinkle of sea salt (to taste--and upon tasting, I wished I had been a little more generous here; personally, I think eggplants can take a lot of salt, but then again, I've been called a salt-aholic).

Turn the eggplant halves over and lay them face-down in a baking dish. Put the 4 garlic cloves unpeeled into the dish along with the eggplants, and proceed to bake. Bake into smithereens! Or until the eggplant is completely collapsed into squishy and translucent deliciousness (which took about an hour for me).

Decant onto plate, and then squeeze the now-squishy garlic cloves out of their skins and rub the cloves across the faces of the cooked eggplants. Then top with yogurt, and finish off with a sprinkle of pimenton & minty spices.