Eggplant Bake (Masbahat’a Darwish)

From Mezze to Milk Tart, Cecile Yazbek, Wakefield Press, 2011.

This looked to be so easy to make I was not too sure whether it really would work. When you just dump everything into a casserole dish and put it in the oven to cook you have the vague feeling that there’s something wrong—but all turned out okay. 

I placed in the casserole dish the following: an eggplant, a potato, an onion and a carrot (all chopped), half a green capsicum cut into pieces, a tomato cut into eighths, 100g haloumi cubed, a bay leaf, pepper and salt, ½ stick cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground allspice, and ¼ cup water. I mixed them up well and then dribbled 2 tablespoons olive oil on top before covering the casserole and placing it in a 200ºC oven for 1 hour. Towards the end of the time I took off the casserole lid.

I had a look at the contents of the casserole about half way through the cooking and saw that it had formed a lot of sauce. Before I started I had thought that I might serve it with a green vegetable like broccoli but when I saw the amount of liquid I put on some rice to have with it.

While I wouldn’t rave over this dish it was quite tasty and went well with the rice. Occasionally a chewy lump of haloumi was met, making a pleasing textural difference from the vegetables.

Taste: ✔✔✔        East of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔