the mobius strip

This one goes out to Claire Pettigrew in Frenchieland, where I hope she is eating many delicious things. Thanks to the Moroccan Soup Bar on Brunswick St in Melbourne for the recipe. My reverse-engineered version is never as good as the real thing, so I recommend heading there if you get the chance. I’m calling this the mysterious chickpea bake because it tastes so much better than you’d imagine from such a simple list of ingredients.

Ingredients

Can of chickpeas
Few slices of lebanese bread, torn into pieces the width of a doorknob
About half a pack of flaked almonds
1-2 cups of a mildly flavoured vegetable like eggplant or zucchini (I usually use eggplant), chopped into smallish cubes
Few cloves of garlic
Small onion
vege stock cube/powder
salt & black pepper
Few cups of thick, creamy yoghurt
Olive oil, for frying

Method

Finely chop the garlic & dice the onion. Saute in olive oil over a low heat in a saucepan, until they start to get transparent. Add the eggplant and fry lightly, then add the chickpeas, a little water, & the stock (add a little salt & pepper at this stage). Bring to the boil, then simmer until the eggplant is soft and most of the liquid has evaporated. Set aside.

Coat the bottom of a frypan with olive oil (or a mix of olive & something cheaper), and fry the almonds until golden brown (watch them carefully - they burn easily!) Remove the almonds but leave the oil in the pan.

Mix the almonds, eggplant & chickpeas, & yoghurt together in a baking dish. Pop into a warm oven, just long enough to heat the dish through (don’t leave it in too long or turn it up too high or the yoghurt will curdle).

Meanwhile, add some more oil to the pan and fry the lebanese bread until golden brown & crunchy (you’ll have to do it in a few lots - don’t skimp on the oil or it will go soggy later). Drain.

Take the chickpea bake out of the oven, stir the fried lebanese bread through, and serve with a little paprika sprinkled on top. Eat straight away, as the bread goes soft pretty quickly.

This is great served with fatoush, baba ganoush, and lebanese bread. Or with warm rice mixed with toasted shredded coconut, mint & currants.

…at this rate I’m going to miss out on the ‘Most infrequently updated blog in Australia’ award. What a shame.

It might be hard to believe, but I actually do get excited by things other than words & politics. For example, I’m a little obsessed with a tabouli-on-steroids salad known as fatoush. Having left my sumac at R___’s house in Brisbane on the weekend, I thought I’d better send her the recipe. And then I figured - why not share it around? And with that a new category is born.

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Cut off a fair chunk of the parsley stalks & discard (or save for stock), chop the rest of the parsley roughly but well. Chop the cucumber & tomatoes into small cubes. Chop the other herbs & the shallots. Mix in a big bowl. Add sumac, cinnamon, salt, juice of the lemon & olive oil. Mix well & leave aside (the longer it gets left at this stage the better it tastes because the bruised parsley absorbs all the flavours from the lemon juice etc).

Fry the lebanese bread in plenty of oil until light-medium brown & crunchy. Mix in with the rest. Serve & eat straight away. If it’s not mind-blowingly delicious add more salt. Eat it greedily, because the bread goes soggy if you leave it for more than an hour or so.

Great served with lebanese bread, baba ganoush, & mysterious chickpea bake.