Roasted aubergine with pomegranate and buttermilk sauce

This recipe is from Yotam Ottolenghi's vegetarian cookbook Plenty (p. 110-111), of which I'm a great fan. The original recipe Aubergine with buttermilk sauce can also be found here. The taste of this dish is out of this world, and when I first made it I thought, I'd never eat anything else ever again. In the meanwhile my views might be less extreme, but still, this is one beautiful dish and I can't wait to make it again!

I didn't change much from the original, but here's my version anyway.

Ingredients

2 large aubergines

80ml olive oil

2tsp lemon thyme leaves

1 pomegranate

Sea salt

Black pepper

Ingredients for the sauce

140ml buttermilk

100g Greek yoghurt

1tbsp olive oil

1 garlic clove

Salt

Method

It's easy to start with the sauce as you only need to chop the garlic and then just stir all the ingredients together. The sauce can be placed to the fridge while you are preparing the aubergines.

Cut the aubergines in half and make diamond shape cuts to the inside of them, be careful not to pierce the skin. Place them in a baking dish and brush with the olive oil until all of the oil has absorbed into the aubergines. Sprinkle some lemon thyme, salt and pepper on the top and roast at 200C for about 35-40 minutes. Let them cool after the roasting.

Spread the sauce on the aubergines and sprinkle the pomegranate seeds on for serving. You can also sprinkle some additional olive oil and lemon thyme on the top. Then enjoy this beautiful dish!

Your VegHog