When you're missing garden egg stew.

When you're missing garden egg stew, a delicious eggplant (aubergine) dish from West Africa, you go to drastic measures to attempt to recreate it with whatever you have on-hand.

Garden Egg stew is one of my favorite dishes. I eat it religiously in Ghana. One of the best preparations is at Bar Naas/NW9 -- a hip and contemporary African restaurant based in Kumasi in Nhyieso, that offers a variety of cuisine ranging from garden egg stew (of course), to shawarma, to pizza to fish n' chips (yum) and more.

​Equipped with Italian eggplant, anchovies, sardines, fresh tomatoes, onions, olive oil and a variety of seasonings (i.e., salt, pepper, dried pepper flakes and nutmeg) and some inspiration from TimeOut.com, I set out to satisfy my deep craving for garden egg stew. What happened was nothing short of a miracle. While clearly not garden egg stew, this poor (wo)man's rendition was quite tasty.

Here's what I did:

1. Fried the onions and some of the seasoning in olive oil.
2. Cleaned then chopped up the eggplant, adding it to the onions.
3. While the onions and eggplant simmered on low heat, I cleaned and chopped up the tomatoes. I then blended them before adding them to the pan with the onions and eggplant.
4. I added a bit of water and more seasoning and continued to let the mixture simmer.
5. After a few minutes, I added in both the sardines and anchovies.
6. I continued to let the mixture simmer, and seasoned as-needed.
7. Then, I ate and really, really enjoyed it!

For roughly 3 servings, 1 onion, 2-3 tomatoes, 1 small tin of sardines, 1 small tin of anchovies and 1 Italian eggplant are plenty.

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It was so nice that I only got to eat it twice.

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I couldn't wait to devour this!

I paired my eggplant stew with steamed baby spinach, kale and mushrooms.