Baked in sauce is roasted eggplant with hot seasonings. relatively few ingredients, straightforward steps. can be used as a pasta sauce or a side dish!
| Prep Time: | 10 mins |
| Cook Time: | 55 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 5 mins |
| Servings: | 2 |
| Yield: | 2 servings |
Ingredients
- cooking spray
- 1 (1 pound) eggplant, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
- 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
- salt and ground black pepper to taste
- 4 ounces plain tomato sauce
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease a shallow baking pan with cooking spray.
- Toss eggplant with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, cayenne, salt, and pepper in the prepared baking pan. Cover with foil.
- Roast in the preheated oven for 40 minutes. Remove foil and reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Add tomato sauce and cook for 15 more minutes.
Reviews
Overall tasty side. I placed the eggplant into my pressure cooker for about 7 mins (who’s got 40 mins to spare anyway?) and then into the oven mixed with the spices for an additional 10 mins. Hit this with “Slap Ya Mama” and added sweet organic “Poppies” cherry tomatoes for a sweet/hot combo. Used fresh cloves of garlic rather than powdered…(always need garlic) and added two leaves of crushed fresh basil and spinach…tossed and place back in oven until spinach was wilted. Laid this out with Biryani/lamb main and we feasted well. Neighbors want the recipe as this is not a bland side with these changes. Have fun and enjoy.
This was a basic roasted eggplant recipe. It definitely could have used more spicing up. My kids enjoyed it though. When I make it again I’ll be sure to add more seasoning and a few other veggies like maybe cherry tomatoes, spinach, etc. Overall it was a nice side dish to add to the roasted lamb I made.
While this was really easy to make and prepare, it did take a significant time to cook. I also don’t feel the end result was proportionate to the time. It’s possible I overcooked the eggplant, as it was overly mushy and too spicy for my personal taste. I also wasn’t sure if I was supposed to remove the skin or not. Probably wouldn’t try again.
I believe the key to this recipe is getting the cayenne to balance with the other spices. As written, it is not only spicy but HOT! So hot, in fact, that the other spices were superfluous. I think this could be a great recipe if the Italian spices were balanced with the cayenne because the eggplant was cooked beautifully. So, as a result, I would recommend starting with 1/8 tsp. cayenne and increasing in each successive attempt until you arrive at that perfect balance of actually tasting the Italian spices with a little heat.