Renghan Lothiu

I don't know about you, but a while ago when I was watching Gordon Ramsay's Best Restaurant series, I was cheering on tiny vegetarian family restaurant Prashad.

I knew that they had a cookbook out, but I have so many cookbooks it's sometimes hard to justify buying new ones, especially big beautiful (and expensive) hardbacks. So I was super happy to find their latest cookbook, Prashad at Home, in my local library.

I might have mentioned before what a fan of eggplant I am, so I was intrigued by a dish I found in the book for spiced chickpea flour coated fried eggplant slices. Tonight I made the dish, named Renghan Lothiu, for dinner.

First the eggplant slices are soaked in water with one teaspoon of salt. Then while the oil heats in the pan, the chickpea flour is mixed with chili powder, salt, turmeric, cumin seeds, asafoetida, ground coriander and ground cumin. Then the eggplant slices are coated in the flour mixture and fried in the oil, turning regularly to cook evenly. I think my burner plates may be too hot, as many of my slices burned a little despite my turning the heat down lower. I'd recommend a medium heat.

I served these with some white rice and mango chutney. They were spicy and crunchy and the eggplant had cooked perfectly in the centre, to a gooey soft texture. Yum!

What are your favourite eggplant dishes? 😊

Bring on the Bentos

So lately I've gone on a bit of a bento binge. Watching lots of anime has inspired me to cook more japanese food, and to buy more bento boxes. (My favourite sites are Bentoland and Bento and Co). I recently bought a shikiri compartment bento (pictured below) and an adorable book-shaped one.

So while I haven't cooked anything new this week, I have enjoyed yummy lunches packed with various dishes I made during a day-long cooking frenzy last weekend.

Behold, my delicious lunches:

Peanuts, currants and pumpkin seeds, easy sesame carrot salad, nasu dengaku eggplant, and rice.

Carrot salad, tamagoyaki, shuumai dumpling, garlic spinach, Japanese potato salad, soy-lime tofu with coconut peanut sauce, and brown rice.

Dumplings steaming!

Omelettes are harder than they look...

Imo yokan jelly snack (from Daiso), tofu, currants, potato salad, spinach, tamagoyaki, pumpkin water chestnut wontons, and rice.

New Shikiri bento box!

Pesto risotto with garlic roast zucchini, spinach, tamagoyaki, tofu, potato salad, Bio cheese flowers, and mushroom steamed bun. 

For the buns, I used the sauce from Terry Romero's BBQ seitan buns to cook the mushrooms in, and the simple dough from Jamie Oliver that I featured in the Tofu Dim Sum post.

The dough for these is genius in its simplicity, the only hard part is getting the bloody things closed so they don't leak!

Pumpkin wonton, spinach, tofu, Bio cheese, carrot salad, and sweet potato latkes with apple sauce. I used Isa's regular latke recipe for these, swapping some of the potatoes for sweet potatoes.

Has anyone else ever made bentos? I would love to start up a vegan lunch box photo pool on Facebook. :-)

Chermoula aubergine

My last aubergine post for a while, I promise! I've just been excited that the footscray market has them super cheap.

Today I made Chermoula aubergine with bulgher and yoghurt, from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem.

I used a spice mix from my favourite Middle Eastern market, Oasis Bakery. It's a little way away from where I live, but whenever my friends and I head down that way, we always stop there for falafel wraps and yummy Lebanese donuts. They stock an amazingly diverse range of spices, each of which have funny little stories printed on the lid. :-)

The Chermoula mix (which contains paprika, cayenne, black peppercorns, among other things) had instructions on the pack to blend it with some onion, fresh mint and coriander, and garlic. I also added some chopped preserved lemon, and oil, as per Ottolenghi's recipe. This mix was spread on the aubergine halves and then they were baked for about 40 minutes.

The bulgher was really easy, I've never made it before but it turns out to be a lot like couscous: just pour a cup of boiling water over a cup of the grain and let it sit to absorb. Then I added some currants instead of sultanas because that's what I had on hand, flaked almonds, some more fresh herbs, spring onion, lemon juice, and salt. The recipe also calls for chopped green olives but unfortunately I'd run out. It was still tasty though. I served the aubergine and bulgher with some plain coyo coconut yoghurt.

Overall, the Chermoula was maybe slightly too spicy for me, next time I think I'll use less of it in the blended mixture, or make my own spice mix with less cayenne.

Jerusalem

Another dish I made this weekend was the Burnt Aubergine and Mograbieh Soup from Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. I've become a little obsessed with Ottolenghi recently, after getting Plenty More for Christmas. I love the simple but rich dishes, and the Middle Eastern style of cooking, so sumptuous.

The soup is a little time consuming, but worth it. I just wish aubergines were cheaper, I want to make all his aubergine recipes!

First you need to roast the aubergines on an open flame or under a hot grill (this is what I did as we have an electric stove) until the skins are burnt, and meanwhile also fry some extra diced aubergine for texture and garnish. After making the tomato base for the soup, you add the burnt aubergine flesh and blend it all up, then add the diced aubergine and cooked mograbieh (Israeli couscous). It's pretty simple in terms of ingredients, but turns out really creamy and filling. Yum.