Roasted Eggplant with pomegranate beets and “buttermilk” sauce

I have wanted to adapt this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book, “Plenty”, for a very long time.  For one thing, the cover art is so inviting and lovely, that I bet this is the first recipe anyone goes to from this book.  The biggest challenge is the buttermilk sauce.  Although, truth be told, the only difference is that this seems to be a bit more of a liquid than the original version.  You could try thickening the yogurt by letting it sit in a towel lined strainer, in the fridge, overnight and see if that helps.  But, I don’t thick it is a requirement.

I don’t know about you, but where I live, when eggplants are in season, pomegranates are not.  Some more improvising had to be accomplished, but I think what I did works well.  The tartness of the pomegranate seeds does come out by mixing the molasses with the beets.  In fact, I really liked this flavor combination and will try to find uses for it in other recipes.

All in all, it was fun to see what I could come up with and I think it worked well.  I encourage you to play with recipes that look good to you but you may not have everything on hand, or want to turn something vegan.  I have never had anything that was so disastrous it was inedible.

Always, always, always have fun and enjoy!

Roasted Eggplant <– click for pdf and printable version, here!