Baked Garden Eggs with a Spicy Peanut Sauce

Garden Eggs (a family of aubergines) are readily available in Nigeria, sold on every street corner, and eaten largely for snack. There is nothing wrong with eating them for snacks, actually, as they add to your five a day fruit and veg requirement. (Read more about Garden Eggs here)

But because I aim to eat for health, I am always finding new ways to eat more vegetables, ways to actually make them the core of my meals. So after having Grilled them, Spiralized them, Stewed them, I have now also decided to bake them....!

I have discovered that baking garden eggs actually gives them a better texture than boiling them. With baking, you do not have to remove the skin and this stills helps to keep the rigidity as compared to boiling where the skin is often removed and the flesh becomes mushy.

I love the fact that I can keep the skin on, because it is so important to the overall fibre content of the veg. The skin also helps to keep the garden eggs in shapes and make them ideal for this particular recipe, because part of the recipe involves serving a delicious sauce in the baked garden eggs!

If you are serious about eating healthy and want to include a variety of different dishes in your diet, you must give this dish a try. Its got its own character, you have to taste it to understand it....

What you need

• Fresh garden eggs (choose the larger ones if possible as they will serve as holding cups for the sauce)
• A balanced combination of chopped red, green peppers and onions
• Some precooked red pepper base sauce
• Dried fish (use dried fish such as Panla/Oporoko or any other type of fish pieces that you fancy. These will provide much needed protein to balance your dish)
• Peanut butter
• Salt and peppers to taste

What to do

• Start by washing the garden eggs and removing the stalks. 
• Then core out the garden eggs creating a hollow in them
• Sprinkle freshly milled salt and pepper on the eggs and place them on a baking pan.
• Then drizzle some coconut oil on them, cover with foil paper and bake in an oven for about 10 minutes (depending on how soft you want them to be). Covering them enables them to sweat and cook without drying out.
• Then remove the foil and continue to bake for another 5 minutes or so. This will let the eggs brown slightly and help them keep their rigidity
• Remove from the tray and serve hot with some delicious Spicy Peanut Sauce

For the Sauce: Peanut butter is traditionally served with garden eggs, so creating a peanut sauce to serve with this dish works perfectly. All you need is to brown some peppers and onions and add some precooked red pepper base sauce. Add some dried fish to provide a bit of much needed protein, then also add some peanut butter to add extra taste and flavour to the overall dish....