Meal Plan ~ Chicken and Eggplant

Last week I shared with you why I started my meal plan and some of the foods that I cook, my favourite being chilli beef. On Saturday I went food shopping for the month and I picked up some diced chicken fillets which were on sale and a few other things including my mince, eggplant and pork for my all time home made delicacies. Today I wanted to share my meal plan for this week (Monday and Tuesday) since I won't be home rest of the week until Sunday.
I can not recall the last time I ate eggplant so much that I was not sure how I was going to cook it, after some research (maestro google) I decided I was going to bake them. Several recipes has mentioned just putting straight in the oven but I wanted to some how cook them a bit before the oven. I found a recipe that suggested I soak the chopped eggplants into slightly salty water for half an hour then slightly fry or grill them until brown (I chose to fry).
As I have mentioned previously I am not good at writing out recipes so I will add captions to each photo as a way to explain what I did.

Step 1: Chop onion and asparagus, then diced the chicken fillet. Fry both on either side of the pan on low heat for 10 minutes or until fairly cooked.

This is how it should look like, almost cooked but not yet.

Step 2: Add tomato puree (I added some chopped tomatoes as well), salt, pepper (and chilli if you want) then add water and simmer for 10 minutes

Whilst I was cooking the chicken I had already soaked the eggplants in the salted water for 30 minutes, I then removed from the water and heated a pot with olive oil (just a tablespoon)

Before and After frying the eggplants for 3 minutes.

Step 3: In the baking tray layer the eggplants then top over with the chicken sauces cooked earlier, then sprinkle some oregano and cover with foil before baking for 20 minutes.

Serve with choice of side dish, I felt like some rice so I had mine with rice.

I can promise you, you will be licking your fingers all day. I love how simple and easy this is to make and could probably be done faster than me but it was first time so I was happy to take my time. Cooking has become something I enjoy and is very therapeutic and it's my me time so this is awesome to recreate something I will enjoy.

So what do you think of my cooking? How do you cook your eggplants? I have some more in the house and need more recipes for next week so please do share.