Warm Salad of Aubergine, Moghrabieh & Chickpeas

Persepolis in Peckham is one of my all time favourite shops.  What you can't buy there or learn about whilst you're shopping really isn't worth knowing.  Each time I go I seem to pick up an ingredient I've never cooked with before, as well as stocking up on cupboard staples for recipes I love to cook from Sally Butcher's Veggiestan or Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem.

A rather large packet of moghrabieh had been lurking in my cupboard for a while (I would say unopened, but I have a toddler who is rather partial to 'digging' them with his mini digger and liberally distributing them around the house).  Together with an aubergine, half a jar of rather lovely chickpeas and a few lonely tomatoes they made a tasty impromptu warm salad for dinner on a cool May evening.

Serves 2 as a main meal or 4 as a light lunch.

Ingredients

100g moghrabieh
1 aubergine
3 tbsp olive oil (plus a little extra for the tomatoes)
1 tsp sumac
8 small tomatoes
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 small onion, halved and finely sliced
200g chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
salt & black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180 C (fan).

Cook the moghrabieh according the pack instructions (I cooked mine in boiling water for around 15-20 minutes).

Slice the aubergine in half lengthways and then, placing the cut side down on the chopping board, slice each half into 1cm thick semi circles.  Mix with the sumac and 2 tablespoons of olive oil, season generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper and then roast for about 20-30 minutes until cooked and starting to brown (you will need to turn them over at east once during cooking).

Put the tomatoes in a small roasting dish, season and drizzle with a little olive oil.  Roast in the oven for 12 minutes, or until the skins are just starting to colour.  Set to one side.

Place a medium frying pan over a moderate heat and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil.  Add the cumin seeds and fry for 1-2 minutes until they release their aroma.  Add the sliced onions and cook for 7-8 minutes, until they are starting to brown, then add the chickpeas.  Cook for 5 minutes, then add the ground coriander and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Mix together the cooked moghrabieh, aubergines, onions and chickpeas and chopped parsley and place on a serving plate.  Top with the roasted tomatoes and their juices.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

New Ways with Sumac

A fair while back I was given some sumac by a friend who is a fellow food lover. It has (and I hope I'm not in trouble for admitting this...!) sat in the cupboard with my other spices pretty much unused apart from the off sniff to see if would go with some concoction or other. Basically, I'd never really found an inspiring use for it until I came across this recipe - Sumac Spiced Aubergine Schnitzel with Tabbouleh.

Sumac comes from the berries of a bush that grows wild in the Mediterranean and parts of the Middle East. The berries are dried and crushed or ground to form a rich red powder which is used as a souring agent, in the same way that some cuisines use lemon. Sumac is often used to flavour grilled meats and fish, or mixed with yogurt and served as an accompaniment to kebabs. But, before this recipe, none of the recipes which use sumac which I've come across have been vegetarian and, not ever having cooked with sumac, I wasn't quite sure how to use it so it lingered at the back of the spice cupboard until now!

This is another really good recipe from The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Elia (which I've blogged about before) which, most importantly, works. Basically, it's a great big super tasty aubergine steak with a crisp crumb coating and I'm a huge fan of aubergines so it's great to find a new way of cooking them. It has all the flavours of the Middle East - parsley, mint, sumac - and works perfectly with the Puy Lentil and Feta Tabbouleh (shown in my photo above) which is also in The Modern Vegetarian. Here is my version of Maria's recipe (I changed some of her quantities to suit our tastes):

Ingredients

120g flat leaf parsley
20g mint leaves
4 tomatoes (finely diced)
1 small red onion (finely diced)
150g puy lentils (cooked)
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
50g feta cheese

(the original recipe also included 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon)

Method

Slice the parsley as thinly as possible starting at the leafy top and going all the way down to the stalks. Repeat with the mint leaves. Combine the tomatoes, onion, lentils, herbs and spices and season. Dress with the lemon juice and oil. Stir in the feta just before serving.

Having never followed a recipe for tabbouleh of any sort before (just making up my own versions) what Maria says about slicing the parsley made perfect sense! "It was Anissa Helou who first showed me the art of making tabbouleh. The secret of this beautiful dish lies in the way you chop your herbs - they should be lovingly sliced, very finely, to produce thin slivers with a minimum of bruising". The taste and texture of the parsley was exactly how I've tasted it in tabbouleh which I've eaten in restaurants but I'd never realised that the way in which you chop the parsley that makes the difference. It really is worth giving that parsley some loving attention because it does add to the dish in a big way!

It is slightly different to many of the main course vegetarian recipes I generally cook as it's made up of two distinct component parts, almost like you would have meat or fish with side of salad or vegetables. But I think that's a good thing because it may well inspire me to create similar veggie dishes where the side dish would go equally well with meat for Andrew.

Update: I remembered that after friying the aubergines in the crumb coating I put them in the oven for a short time (maybe 5 minutes) to finish cooking and crisp up some more. Whilst you can't prepare the aubergines too far in advance and leave them uncooked (the bread crumbs would go soggy!), you could probably prepare them to the stage of having fried them and then reheat in the oven when you need them which makes them perfect for entertaining.