This is a light, easy and delicious dish made with aubergine, cauliflower that is served with a roasted garlic and lemon sauce. It is perfect to serve either as lunch or dinner and can be prepared in advance. It’s allergy friendly and suits most food preferences and diets since it is both vegan, low carb, gluten, nut & grain free.
I love making easy, light dishes only using a few key ingredients that I always have at home. I usually have around 10 different vegetables that I always keep in the fridge and use on a daily basis. But it would get a bit boring to eat them the same way everyday. Thats why I try to come up with new dishes and new ways of preparing these vegetables everyday. I kind of love the challenge to make something different using almost the same ingredients. I also love proving people that eating healthy and delicious doesn’t have to be boring. And that you can make soooo many different things using the same key ingredients, but just varying how you prepare and pair them. Does this dish look boring to you? Im only using two key ingredients: aubergine and cauliflower. It’s easy to spice up a dish by just making a delicious dip sauce to serve along with it. And there are so many different and easy sauces you can make in only 1-2 minutes.
Ok, but I have to be honest. This dish takes a little longer to prepare than my regular meals. Thats because of the roasted garlic, since it takes around 20 minutes to bake in the oven. If you don’t want to wait for that long, you can easily make this sauce by using raw garlic. But it will have a different taste than the roasted version. Also make sure not to use as many garlic cloves, raw garlic is much stronger than roasted.
Usually I like to eat my cauliflower rice raw with just some lemon juice mixed into it. But this time I fried it for 3-4 minutes in some sesame oil together with some lemon juice. It’s fried for just a few minute, only to make it warm and a little browned, I still want to keep the crunchy raw texture and not have it soft. I think the warm, crunchy and a bit nutty cauliflower rice makes such a nice combination with the soft grilled aubergine. I topped this dish with some pomegranate seeds so give it some more freshness and crunch. And then served it with the smooth, light and fresh roasted garlic sauce on top.
Ingredients for this Grilled Aubergine with Roasted Garlic & Lemon Sauce:
- Cauliflower
- Aubergine
- Garlic
- (Vegan) yogurt
- Lemon
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Pomegranate seeds
- Fresh parsley
- Sesame oil
Other recipes you might like:
- Cucumber & Radish Salad
- Cauliflower Tabbouleh (Oil & Gluten Free)
- Half Baked Salad (Vegan, Paleo & Gluten Free)
- Roasted Red Cabbage on a Tahini Yogurt Dressing
- Sesame Fried Cauliflower Rice with Marinated Aubergine (Vegan, Gluten & Grain Free)
- Tofu Bowl with a Spicy Tamarind Dressing
Grilled Aubergine with Cauliflower Rice & Roasted Garlic Lemon Sauce (Vegan, Gluten & Grain Free, Low Carb)
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cauliflower riced
- 1 tsp Sesame oil
- 2 small Aubergines Sliced
- 5-6 Garlic cloves (depending on how strong garlic taste you prefer)
- 3/4 cup (Vegan) yogurt
- 1/2+1/2 Lemon juiced
- 1/2 Lemon zest
- Salt, to taste
- Black pepper, to taste
- 2-3 tbsp Pomegranate seeds
- Fresh parsley, to top
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 225 degrees Celsius.
- Place the peeled garlic cloves in some aluminium foile and seal so that you have a sealed package and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until soft and tender.
- Meanwhile preheat a grill pan (or regular pan) over medium heat. Season the aubergine/eggplant with some salt and fry until grill marks starts to show and they are getting soft and tender.
- Preheat a nonstick pan over medium heat with some sesame oil in it.
- Run the cauliflower in a blender until you have a rice like texture.
- Add the cauliflower rice to the nonstick pan together with half of the lemon juice and fry for 3-4 minutes, until it's warm and a little browned.
- When garlic is ready use a hand mixer or a blender to combine the roasted garlic cloves (start with a few, and then add more. Different garlics may have different strong flavor), yogurt, lemon juice, lemon zest salt and pepper. Mix until smooth. Taste to check if more seasoning is needed.
- Place cauliflower rice on plates, top with the grilled aubergine.
- Serve with pomegranate seeds, roasted yoghurt dressing and fresh parsley.
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