Roasted Eggplant Salad with Smoked Almonds and Goats Cheese – Faith Durand

Hi Folks,

When I started writing this blog one of the big drivers for me was to get better use of my burgeoning cookbook collection. We’d also recently bought our first home and I was finally able to have that vegie patch I’d only been able to dream of while living in rentals with tiny courtyards. It was definitely an exciting moment for both of us; finding our new home, taking the plunge and then making it ours.

Back in November we put in our first ever vegie bed, prior to that I’d been growing out of mainly containers as we watched the sunlight and got a feel for the micro-climate of the backyard. I planted out a vast array of vegies and some fared better than others. Some took their time to show their cheeky faces while others produced heavily and then dropped off the perch. Last week I picked my first ever eggplant. At the time it was the first and only eggplant on a very lonely bush but since then another three have set. Exciting times!

I was pretty keen to put this eggplant to good use in a new and exciting way and decided this was to be a job for the pros. So I logged on to Eat Your Books and searched for ‘eggplant’. A quick word about this magnificent website, as it’s such a brilliant resource. You create your account, add in all of the cookbooks in your collection and then you can use the search function to search for recipes in your own cookbooks. It’s an online indexing service that has changed the way I work in the kitchen. Recipes I’d forgotten I had are now at my fingertips, it’s definitely worth investigating if you’ve got a growing collection.

One of the latest features of the site is that they have also now started to index recipes from many of the blogs I visit on a regular basis. The Kitchn is one of those blogs, there are always fantastic recipes and ideas and so when I entered the word ‘eggplant’ this recipe was one of the first to pop up. It’s seriously a wonderful dish to try, rich and smoky with the delicate crunch of almonds. I added in some lentils to make it go a little further and added some lime because I’d just run out of lemon juice but other than that I pretty much stayed true to the recipe.

So please hop on over to the Kitchn and check it out!

Enjoy!

Erin’s Note: I don’t get anything out of writing posts like these, I’m not affiliated with anyone and am proudly ad-free. I just do it because I like to share these things around.