I bought an eggplant... *Updated*

I bought an eggplant.  I like eggplant when I get it at restaurants, so I thought I could make something, so I bought an eggplant.  I had it for almost a week and had found a few recipes that I thought about, but I had no idea how to cook eggplant.

I settled on this recipe-Spinach & Eggplant Casserole.  I gathered my ingredients, and I read up on tips for cooking eggplant.  I found this tip about salting the eggplant on both sides, letting sit for an hour in a colander, and then rinsing.  It's supposed to add flavor.

It was time to make the recipe.  I do not cook exactly according to a recipe most of the time.  This was no exception.

I cut up the eggplant (then later cut them up more, and wished I had cut them up even smaller).  I added salt, but probably should have let the eggplant sit for longer in the salt.  The next step was roasting the eggplant.  I decided to use a smaller casserole dish, so I used less ingredients than the original recipe called for.  I put the oven on low broil, and roasted the eggplant coated in olive oil.

I am impatient, so I probably should have let this cook for longer, and possibly less eggplant in this dish to cook more thoroughly.

Next I steamed frozen spinach.  The recipe called for fresh spinach, but I have an abundance of frozen spinach that I needed to use.

The original recipe did not call for meat, but I thought I would add ground turkey.

After roasting the eggplant, I added ground turkey, spinach, mushrooms, a roma tomato, and spaghetti sauce.  I did not measure anything, but added based on what I had, and what I thought would be good.  I then topped it with pizza shredded cheese (mozzarella & Cheddar mixture).

Then I put it in the oven to cook on 375 for about 20 minutes.

It looks very tasty, and I think it would have been better had the eggplant been cooked a little more.  I like spaghetti sauce, so that added lots of flavor, but overall this dish did not have as much flavor as I would have liked.

I plan to try this recipe again, and I will update to tell you what I did to hopefully make it better.  If you try this, let me know what you did, and how you liked it.

*UPDATE*

I had leftovers, so today I decided to heat some up for lunch, but wanted more flavor.  I decided to add cottage cheese, a little salt, pepper, and basil flakes.  I warmed it up in the microwave, and it was SO GOOD!  Next time I think I will add cottage cheese when I bake it, and make sure that I cook the eggplant more thoroughly.  I might add more salt, pepper, and other seasonings, but I think the cottage cheese is what gave this leftover dish added flavor and more yumminess!