Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

I've been enjoying Sally Butcher's book Veggiestan which we have out from the library at the moment and am - as regular readers will doubtless be aware - rather easily persuaded into trying any recipe that involves fried aubergines.

There are two things, though, that really irritate me about the book: 

• firstly, that it is randomly patronising at times "if you don't have a lid, you can improvise one with foil", really?  really?! thank you so much for that tip, it's changed my culinary life, I would not at all have figured that out under my own steam... ; and
• secondly, as knowledgeable as the author seems to be about Middle Eastern food, she seems to be almost entirely unaware of its connections to Indian food.  For instance, she has a whole page on how drinking a salty, yoghurty drink is uniquely Iranian, *cough* salted lassi *cough*. Gujarati and Afghani food, especially, have a lot in common.  I learned a while back that there's strong historical evidence that my sub-caste (Lohana) are from Afghanistan originally, which I sometimes ponder when making recipes like this one which clearly are extremely Indian in flavours.

Basically, you fry some aubergines:

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Add tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and tumeric and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if you need it:

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander
and chilli after 30 minutes of simmering

Layer it in a dish with the yoghurty sauce (yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic and mint - basically raita *cough* Sally Butcher..) and serve either hot or at room temperature.  Both myself and the lovely spouse thought it tasted even better the next day.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

cheese-baked egg-stuffed tomatoes - Sally Butcher recipe

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

For no particular reason, I've been making a few things lately that involve baking eggs inside things.  I love eggs and baked eggs are a great way to have eggs for dinner, rather than the usual breakfast.  I also rather enjoy the thrill of fitting the eggs inside whatever it is.

I have Sally Butcher's Veggiestan out of the library at the moment and one of the recipes that I instantly wanted to try was this one for tomatoes stuffed with eggs and topped with cheese.  Cunningly, it involves putting some bread underneath to sop up the juices and make more substantial.

These were pretty easy - just scooping out the inside of tomatoes, frying some onions, mixing some of the inside of the tomato with the onions, cracking an egg inside each and topping with cheese but look a lot more impressive.  I did think that they might go better with brunch than dinner, though.

Hollowed out tomatoes

Hollowed tomatoes with eggs inside

Stuffed tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Arto der haroutunian recipes: leeks with olive oil (bras yahni, broad beans with carrots (baklali havuci)

leeks with olive oil (bras yahni)

Broad beans and carrots (baklali havuci)

So, as I've mentioned before, I love my Arto der Haroutunian cookbook.  I hadn't cooked anything from it for a while so I decided to try out a couple of new recipes from it.  Both carefully selected based on ingredients that I already had.

Well, the leeks in olive oil recipe was also selected because it involves 8-10 whole peppercorns and I have a lot of respect for recipes that involve whole peppercorns.  It was like an Armenian version of risotto or paella, this, though simpler than either.   Basically, you fry an onion (or in my case a few onions as I didn't have enough leeks), and then some leeks (1 1/2 lbs) for a while in plenty of olive oil.  Then stir in a couple of chopped tomatoes, salt, whole peppercorns, rice (not too much, just 2-3 handfuls) and (according to Arto) a 1/4 of a pint of water and simmer with the lid on for 20-30 minutes.

Frying  stuff for bras yahni

Frying  stuff for bras yahni

That didn't look like nearly water to me when I added it for the quantity of rice so I kept a fairly close eye on it and ended up adding more like a pint of water in total and it didn't (see photo) end up particularly liquidy.  You then add some lemon juice and sumac to finish.  I really liked it, think I'll be making again. It reminds me how good Middle Eastern food can be - the leeks ad lemon come through really strongly but it remains a comforting rice dish at heart.

leeks with olive oil (bras yahni)

The main reason that I decided to make the broad beans with carrots (baklali havuci) to go with it (other than having broad beans and carrots to use up) was the fantastically incomprehensible Jewish proverb that Arto quotes just before it:  "One has no appetite for eating - the other has no eating for his appetite."  What?!  Seriously, if anyone reading understands this, please do explain!

Anyway.  One of the things that's annoying about cooking is that, while sometimes there are fiddly things that are not worth doing, there are some fiddly things that absolutely are worth doing.  Like peeling broad beans. Now I'm pretty speedy in the kitchen with things like this but even I find this tedious.  And yet it is definitely worth it.

10 mins of effort:  peeled broad beans

Once you've peeled the broad beans, this is pretty easy:  put broad beans in a saucepan with a chopped onion and a little water (250 ml), cook for 30 mins.  Stir in chopped carrots, chopped mint, chopped garlic, salt/black pepper/sugar/olive oil to taste.  It's not wildly exciting, it has to be said, certainly not compared with the proverb but a nice side dish.

Broad beans and carrots (baklali havuci)

Imam Bayildi, Arto Der Haroutunian recipe

Stuffed - pre baking

I have a lovely book on vegetarian Middle Eastern cookery by Arto Der Haroutunian.  One of the thing I love about the book is the little stories that accompany every recipe.  One tells me that a Persian proverb is "Even the worm in the rock dreams of fresh herbs"!  Another tells the story of the name of this dish - "the imam fainted" due to its deliciousness.

I've always wanted to try it but it's quite fiddly so it's taken me a little while to get around to it.

Mighty Aubergines!

 The recipe involves frying up onions, green peppers, tomatoes, garlic with paprika, salt and black pepper slowly with lots of olive oil.  You then put a slit in each aubergine and fry them in 250 ml of oil.  This was where I got a bit stuck.  Much as I love this cookbook, one thing it's a bit short on are detailed instructions.

In this case, it told me "fry the aubergine until the flesh has started to soften".  Clearly, it starts to soften almost immediately!  When you stop really depends on how much softening counts as softening!  

Stuffed - pre baking

Eventually, I went for frying them for about 15 mins, when the outer flesh was soft but the aubergines were still not completely cooked.  You then open up the slits a bit, stuff them with the onion/pepper mixture, then bake for an hour with some water to cover the bottom of the dish.

Stuffed - pre baking

Overall verdict:  pretty damn tasty.  But:

• this recipe is realy quite faffy compared to some others and I'm slightly dubious as to whether it's really quite worth it..
• because, unlike some other recipes, this recipe doesn't involve scooping out any of the inside flesh of the aubergine, the resulting dish involves quite large chunks of aubergine flesh - which tastes nice but ended up very undersalted as there wasn't really a way to salt it and aubergine really needs salt to taste really good.

I think the stuffing was the best bit - the slow frying suggested by the recipe and the sheer quantity of olive oil involved made it gorgeous. I might just stop there next time!