Coming up with menus has always been a struggle for me. It seems that if I have a main course in mind, then I don’t know what to make for the side dish. I end up doing steam-in-bag veggies a lot. Then there are times when I have the opposite problem: I have a great side dish recipe but no clue for the main. On those days I break out my cast-iron skillet or grill pan and pan fry a couple of steaks of chicken breasts. That’s what happened here, and I have to tell you I’m not mad at it. In fact, this Roasted Aubergine and Courgette with Sumac and Herbs recipe paired with a couple of steaks was one of the best meals I’ve had in a while!
These easy Roasted Aubergine and Courgettes are sprinkled with sumac and tossed with fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon before serving. A wonderful vegetable dish which can be eaten hot or as part of a salad buffet.
The Ingredients
First, this recipe needs some translation. Aubergines are eggplants and courgettes are zucchini. I’m going to call them eggplant and zucchini in this post, so let’s think of this Roasted Aubergine and Courgette as Roasted Eggplant and Zucchini from now on.
As usual, I had the spices and olive oil in my pantry. I even had a fresh container of sumac that I ordered just for this recipe (I can’t find it in my local grocery store).
I had to buy the vegetables and herbs, but my regular grocery store had them all in stock. The eggplant and zucchini seemed quite large (huge!), but I bought 2 each since that’s what the recipe called for.
Oh, and one more thing to translate: coriander is cilantro. It’s UK English vs. US English, but you get used to it.
The Process
This was designed as a simple recipe, so there isn’t a ton of work here. I’m not complaining! In fact, I happened to make it on a night when I was worn out, and I was impressed that something this good came out of my kitchen when I really wanted to order takeaway and be done with it.
Gotta start with preheating the oven, and that required me to convert Celcius to Fahrenheit. Thank goodness there’s an app for that! The recipe gives a range of 320℉ to 356℉, and I decided on 350℉ to be cautious.
Prep Work
Next up was cutting the veg into 16 wedges. I wasn’t sure if that was 16 of each vegetable or 16 of each kind of vegetable. I probably thought about it too much, but I was really tired! Since the eggplants were so big, I cut each one into 16 pieces. The zucchinis weren’t too big, so I cut them into 8 wedges each. That made the pieces somewhat uniform in size.
Having giant vegetables meant I ended up with a lot of wedges when I was done. There was just too much to fit on a single sheet pan, so I split the wedges between 2 sheet pans. Then I proceeded with drizzling the olive oil and sprinkling the seasonings per the instructions. I tossed them with my hands to keep things quick and simple.
Cooking and Finishing Up
I popped both sheet pans into the oven on separate shelves and roasted them for the minimum time of 30 minutes to start with. Even with a quick toss at the 15-minutes mark, they hadn’t browned by the time the buzzer went off. I gave them another toss and put them back in for another 10 minutes. That did the trick.
I finished the prep work while the veggies were roasting. It took me 3 minutes to weigh and chop the parsley, cilantro, and mint leaves as well as slice a lemon into wedges. Tip: If you don’t have a kitchen scale, I’d say it was a good handful or about 1/3 cup (packed) of each herb.
Finally, here’s the breakdown of time spent on my Roasted Aubergine and Courgette with Sumac and Herbs:
- 12 minutes to prep
- 40 minutes to cook
- 52 minutes total
The time given is a range of 45-55 minutes, and my time was right in line with that.
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