Tips for easier cooking I actually have not even eaten this yet but I would give two tips to make the prep easier. 1 dice up the eggplants before you roast the. Has anyone tried to dice after roasting? What a mess! 2 just buy chopped tomatoes if they are going to be chopped anyway. I ask again....has any tried to chop canned whole tomatoes? What a mess!
Very tasty but recipe could be improved For starters it tasted delicious! Some things I would change though: Cut up the eggplant BEFORE roasting and only cook just barely long enough to get it a bit cooked a full 20 min. leaves it mushy. The tomatoes are messy but you can just barely chop them and add the sauce from the can. I also doubled most of the spices especially the bay leaf cinnamon salt and pepper made the whole thing have a bit more depth of flavor. Pros: delicious! crock pot recipe Cons: ingredients can be difficult
Tasty and Satisfying I can only assume that they call for dried & soaked chickpeas so that they absorb the flavor of the stew during cook time. Since I couldn't find that I used canned and added them with the tomatoes in the last hour of cooking. I really enjoyed this. The roasted eggplant adds a toothsome texture though the dominant flavor profile seems to come from the tomatoes. That's not a problem for me since I love them. We ate this as a standalone stew but sure would be great on top of grains like quinoa pasta or rice. Also might consider adding hot sauce and topping with cheddar cheese. Pros: Delicious versatile Cons: Long prep time
A bit bland for my taste I really wanted this to taste better than it did. After eating a serving from the exact recipe I knew I had better work on it or my girls would resort to fast food. So first I added soy sauce not much better then a can of low sodium black beans and a good bit of salsa. We had it over rice and it was okay. I will definitely keep looking for more eggplantrecipes Pros: very healthy no guilt for eating Cons: missing flavor
Tasty and filling Found it tasty and very filling. Served it over quinoa yesterday and am going to serve it over polenta tonight. My husband loved it too. Pros: slow cooker recipe Cons: Took a little more prep time
odd flavor/mushy I really like eggplant garbonzo beans tomatoes and mushrooms but for some reason the flavor of this seemed odd to me and I would have liked the eggplant to have more texture. Perhaps it is the porcini mushrooms that threw it off for me flavor wise. It overpowered the dish. If I were to make it again I would skip the mushrooms add cumin and chili and cook it on a stove top with precooked garbonzo beans to keep the eggplant from getting quite so cooked down. Pros: Some of my favorite ingredients Cons: Ingrediends did not work together well
Missing ingredient I made this after craving vegetables and looking for something that I could eat soon after getting home from work without too much work (I did steps 2-4 the night before then threw it in the crock pot the next morning). I left out the mushrooms because I'm not a fan but otherwise followed the directions. I saw tips of cubing the eggplant prior to roasting which I think would make it a lot less messy. When it was finished it was good but I felt that it was missing something. It took me a while to figure out but now seems so obvious that missing ingredient is cheese! The only cheese I had on hand were grated parm and cheddar so I opted for the parm and it was immensely better. I imagine mozzarella would be ideal so when I reheat it (I plan on freezing the batch) I'll be sure to have some.
Delicious (with modifications) Fortunately I read the reviews before making this dish but it's easy to recognize that it would be bland just by reading the list of ingredients. I took many of the suggestions and put them together by adding chili cumin and cayenne. I also diced the eggplant before roasting. Because it takes so much prep time on the stove top I just made the entire dish on the stove rather than using the slow cooker. It came out great and I'd make it again (but definitely not as outlined in the standard recipe). Pros: easy
Don't Even Attempt This One I ate all of this since I'm on a budget and I made it. I will admit that it froze well. When I finally got rid of the last frozen container I was never so glad. No more bad lunches. The flavors seemed like they were going a bit for Moroccan but this isn't anything like those heavenly flavor combinations. I wanted to find something to entice with eggplant and the eggplant was good after being roasted but that flavor didn't transfer to the stew itself. This stew was a bit on the mushy side--nothing new with a stew--but the combination of flavors never melded together well. It was edible but not something to savor. It felt like it was missing a base flavor that something on the bottom of the palate to give it a steadiness. Even adding in a dollop of sour cream didn't make it any better. In fact it was easier to get it down without the sour cream which is a feat. Look away -- cook something else! Pros: It freezes well. Cons: It doesn't taste very good mushy texture.