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This Week's Recipe: Chermoula Eggplant
Dec. 19th, 2015 11:06 pmI was planning to get into the habit of cooking something non-trivial on a regular basis, but haven't gotten around to that since June. Now that I'm moved into the new place, I'm trying to get back to it.
This week's recipe (from last Wednesday), was Chermoula Eggplant with Bulgur and Yogurt from Yotam Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. (Chermoula is a sauce flavored with savory spices and preserved lemon.)
Choices and substitutions: I used Chinese eggplant because that seemed to be more the right size than alternatives (worked well, though it seemed to be a little thinner than the ones depicted in the cookbook). I didn't toast the sliced almonds (didn't think it was worth the extra step, that was fine). I used Kalamata olives instead of green olives partly on preference, but mainly because that was what I was able to find pitted and halved (that substitution worked well). I wasn't able to find the jars of little preserved lemons I've used in the past, but Whole Foods turned out to sell preserved lemons in their bulk specialty foods (larger lemons, but flavored similarly, worked just as well). I failed to mix in olive oil with the bulgar while adding the olives, raisins, and herbs (an oversight, but I think that worked out all right in the end; while it's a bit more dry that way, that makes for a nice contrast).
How it turned out: Really well! This recipe has a fair number of steps, but the hardest part was finely chopping preserved lemon for the sauce, and the end product looks like the result of way more effort than was actually involved. The trick of plumping the raisins in warm water is a good one, and I'll be looking for other occasions to use that sauce.
This week's recipe (from last Wednesday), was Chermoula Eggplant with Bulgur and Yogurt from Yotam Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. (Chermoula is a sauce flavored with savory spices and preserved lemon.)
Choices and substitutions: I used Chinese eggplant because that seemed to be more the right size than alternatives (worked well, though it seemed to be a little thinner than the ones depicted in the cookbook). I didn't toast the sliced almonds (didn't think it was worth the extra step, that was fine). I used Kalamata olives instead of green olives partly on preference, but mainly because that was what I was able to find pitted and halved (that substitution worked well). I wasn't able to find the jars of little preserved lemons I've used in the past, but Whole Foods turned out to sell preserved lemons in their bulk specialty foods (larger lemons, but flavored similarly, worked just as well). I failed to mix in olive oil with the bulgar while adding the olives, raisins, and herbs (an oversight, but I think that worked out all right in the end; while it's a bit more dry that way, that makes for a nice contrast).
How it turned out: Really well! This recipe has a fair number of steps, but the hardest part was finely chopping preserved lemon for the sauce, and the end product looks like the result of way more effort than was actually involved. The trick of plumping the raisins in warm water is a good one, and I'll be looking for other occasions to use that sauce.
