Last week I shared with you why I started my meal plan and some of the foods that I cook, my favourite being chilli beef. On Saturday I went food shopping for the month and I picked up some diced chicken fillets which were on sale and a few other things including my mince, eggplant and pork for my all time home made delicacies. Today I wanted to share my meal plan for this week (Monday and Tuesday) since I won’t be home rest of the week until Sunday.
I can not recall the last time I ate eggplant so much that I was not sure how I was going to cook it, after some research (maestro google) I decided I was going to bake them. Several recipes has mentioned just putting straight in the oven but I wanted to some how cook them a bit before the oven. I found a recipe that suggested I soak the chopped eggplants into slightly salty water for half an hour then slightly fry or grill them until brown (I chose to fry).
As I have mentioned previously I am not good at writing out recipes so I will add captions to each photo as a way to explain what I did.
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| Step 1: Chop onion and asparagus, then diced the chicken fillet. Fry both on either side of the pan on low heat for 10 minutes or until fairly cooked. |
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| This is how it should look like, almost cooked but not yet. |
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| Step 2: Add tomato puree (I added some chopped tomatoes as well), salt, pepper (and chilli if you want) then add water and simmer for 10 minutes |
Whilst I was cooking the chicken I had already soaked the eggplants in the salted water for 30 minutes, I then removed from the water and heated a pot with olive oil (just a tablespoon)
Before and After frying the eggplants for 3 minutes.
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| Step 3: In the baking tray layer the eggplants then top over with the chicken sauces cooked earlier, then sprinkle some oregano and cover with foil before baking for 20 minutes. |
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| Serve with choice of side dish, I felt like some rice so I had mine with rice. |
I can promise you, you will be licking your fingers all day. I love how simple and easy this is to make and could probably be done faster than me but it was first time so I was happy to take my time. Cooking has become something I enjoy and is very therapeutic and it’s my me time so this is awesome to recreate something I will enjoy.
So what do you think of my cooking? How do you cook your eggplants? I have some more in the house and need more recipes for next week so please do share.
