A Taste of the Middle East

One of the food blogs I follow on a regular basis is The Vegan Mother's Blog. Last week she posted about a Middle Eastern restaurant she likes and how she re-created their sample platter at home. It sounded so yummy, I had to try it.

I included the same dishes that Lizzy did; hummus, baba ganoush, and mujaddara. For the hummus, I don't use a recipe, I just add the ingredients to taste. In this hummus I used roasted garlic rather than raw, but admittedly, would have liked more of a garlic flavor, and wish I would have gone raw. For the baba ganoush I used a recipe from Vegan Cookbook, which I checked out of the library a few weeks ago, only instead of vegan yogurt I used cow's milk yogurt. And for the mujaddara, I used this recipe, only I added about 1 Tbs of cumin to the lentils and rice as they cooked. I also used brown basmati, which requires a much longer cooking time than indicated in the recipe. I knew it was going to take longer, but I got a little hasty and unfortunately didn't have the patience to let the rice cook completely, so it was sadly a little underdone.

This was a great meal, and incredibly filling. Rob loved the baba ganoush.....I was afraid that he's balk at it once he learned it's main ingredient is roasted eggplant!! None the less, he loved it. I'll definitely be making this middle eastern feast again. Although, I think I will steam the rice in the rice cooker before adding it to the lentils.