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Roasted Eggplant and Red Pepper Sauce

Trying to incorporate more vegetables into your meals this year?  Two of our favorite attachments for vegetable prep are being featured this month.  First up is the blender with this roasted eggplant and red pepper sauce.  Sauce is a very familiar and easy food to use to introduce new or more vegetables into your life, especially if you are also cooking for kids.  This one goes well with pasta, as a dipping sauce for bread, or a sauce for meat.

From AnkarsrumUSA recipe developer, Carmi Adams:

For this recipe you will want to use either baby eggplant, or the longer skinnier Asian/Chinese eggplant.  These are a lot less bitter than regular eggplant, have a thinner peel, and less seeds, making them ideal for use in sauces.

When roasting a lot of different vegetables together, try to keep everything that has the same firmness the same size. Peppers are a lot thinner and softer, so they get cut into bigger chunks. Smaller baby eggplant can just be left whole, while the bigger ones are sliced in half.

 

Roasting vegetables brings out their natural sweetness, and the peppers and carrots balance out the more assertive eggplant quite well.

Roast until tender and can easily be pierced all the way through with a knife.

 

A little vegetable or chicken broth and yogurt help bring all these vegetables together.  I highly recommend regular yogurt, not Greek, for this sauce.  Greek yogurt made the sauce very thick, and it had almost a chalky mouthfeel to it.  If you prefer a vegan sauce, substitute yogurt with a vegan sour cream or vegan plain yogurt.  A little acidity from white wine vinegar finishes the sauce off.  Instead of reaching for salt or sugar, try a splash of vinegar or a squeeze or citrus when finishing off a dish.  Usually that is all it needs.

If your carrots and peppers weren’t as sweet as they should be, or you tend to like sweeter sauces, I recommend a drizzle of date syrup or honey instead of sugar. These will add sweetness but also a depth of flavor that sugar just doesn’t have.

 

This sauce will keep in the refrigerator for a week, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.  Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about this recipe.  Enjoy!

 

Roasted Eggplant and Red Pepper Sauce

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes

 

684 g. (1 1/2 pounds) Chinese/Asian/baby eggplant

3 medium size red bell peppers

229 g. (1/2 pound) carrots

3 large cloves garlic

28 g. (2 Tbsp.) olive oil

123 g. (1/2 cup) vegetable or chicken broth

228 g. (1 cup) full fat plain yogurt, not Greek

6 g. (1 tsp.) kosher salt

30 g. (2 Tbsp.) white wine vinegar

freshly ground pepper to taste

 

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Wash the eggplant, peppers and carrots.  Remove stems from eggplant and cut in half lengthwise.  Remove stem end, seeds and membrane from peppers and cut into quarters.  Remove stem end from carrots and cut into large chunks.  Peel garlic cloves and leave whole.

Place all vegetables in a large bowl and toss with the olive oil.  Distribute between 2 half sheet pans, making sure to space vegetables out for even roasting.

Roast for 35 minutes.

Let vegetables cool down for 15 minutes.

Place the broth, yogurt, salt, vinegar and several grinds of pepper in the Ankarsrum blender.  Add the roasted vegetables.  Cover and blend on the highest speed until sauce is smooth.

Taste and adjust seasoning if desired.  Serve over pasta, as a dipping sauce for bread, or as a sauce for meat.

Place leftovers in a lidded jar and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.  Alternately, place in a freezer safe container with lid and freeze for up to 3 months.

Yield: 5 cups / 40 fl. oz.

Published by

Carmi Adams

Carmi Adams has loved cooking from a very early age; requesting fondue pots and cookbooks for birthdays as a child. She further pursued her passion for food at the Art Institute of Atlanta and obtained a degree in Culinary Arts. Carmi landed a job on the show Good Eats, which aired on the Food Network. For seven years she did everything from food research, recipe development and testing, product testing to feeding a hungry film crew. Now living in the central coast of California, Carmi enjoys the bounty of agriculture, vineyards and farmers markets at her culinary disposal. She has been using the Ankarsrum mixer for over 15 years and feels that it is hands-down the best on the market for home cooks.