Looking thru the fridge this morning, I noticed 2 eggplant that I had bought a few days ago (possibly for the night we had friends over) and promptly forgot about. As I am the only one who eats eggplant, I decided to make baba ghanoush with them. The secret to a good texture is to cook the eggplants whole until they are REAAALLYYY soft, and then drain before the assembly. Not quite as good as the Golden Pita’s version (they have mad Lebanese cooking skillz!), but still pretty tasty.
To go with the whole middle-eastern snack theme that had asserted itself this morning, I made some hummus and flatbreads. I had a stash of olive oil bread dough already in the fridge to make calzones this week sometime, so it was just a matter of snipping off a hunk, rolling it out flat and topping with a good slather of olive oil and coarse salt before baking in a hot oven. The dough is from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes per day, so there is still lots left over.
For the hummus, I have been making it with freshly cooked (not canned) chickpeas lately. I find it makes a big difference in flavour, and they can be cooked in the pressure cooker in about 40 minutes with no soaking. I also like my hummus very creamy, so I really blitz it with the lemon juice and water before adding the olive oil and tahini, in order to get it nice and smooth. I also added a bit of paprika, cumin and coriander to this batch.
Dog update — we finally got a sunny day, so Kimi spent the day following the sunny spots, and trying to get Eric to engage in “bitey” play. As you can see below, she succeeded!