Lamb Stuffed Aubergine (Sort of)

So yesterday I was craving something lamby....and auberginey and one of my favourite dishes from a local Turkish restaurant is spiced lamb mince in baked aubergine shells. So I googled the two main ingredients and came up with this recipe from BBC Food Good. I read the ingredients, and also the comments and many people commented that the recipe wasn't flavourful enough, so I took up some of their suggestions and went for it. I'm also not a huge fan of aubergine skins, so I did bake the shells, but purely for presentation (and I wish now that I would have remembered to take a photo before we devoured the dinner!)



Ingredients:

• 2 small aubergines
• olive oil
• 250g minced lamb
• 1 onion , finely chopped
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon (at least!)
• 1 tsp cumin (at least!)
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tbsp dried oregano 
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 200ml chicken or vegetable stock or white wine
• 150ml pot natural yogurt
• ½ cucumber , seeds scooped out with a teaspoon, finely diced
• cheese of your choice

The method to my madness:

1. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Halve the aubergines lengthways. Scoop out the flesh, if you are like me and you don't like the skin, scoop out ALL the flesh, if you plan to eat the skin, leave about 1 cm if flesh. Then cover the flesh in olive oil and sprinkle over the oregano. Then cover with foil and bake in the oven for 25-30 mins. Check them periodically, they tend to soak up oil quickly and may require a bit more to be added. 
2. Cut up the aubergine flesh and set it aside. Dice up the onion and crush the garlic and throw them into a pan with 1 tbsp of oil heated up. Once they start to soften, throw in the lamb mince. Once it begins to brown, toss in the aubergine flesh and rest of the spices. Then add the stock/wine, stir it for about 1 minute then add the can of tomatoes. let this simmer for about 10 minutes to thicken up.  
3. By this time the aubergines should be almost done, so take them out of the oven and fill with the lamb mince mixture. Then put them back into the oven for about 20 minutes to soften the skins more. After 20 mins, take them out and add some cheese, I only had mozzarella on hand, but feta or goats cheese would have been fabulous!
4. While the cheese is melting, cut up the cucumber and mix with the yogurt and serve this on the side.