Dangerous Eggplant and Stevie Wonder (part 2)

So, after being bitten by the eggplant and spending a suitable amount of time complaining about it, I began to assemble the harissa and honey glazed eggplants.

I mentioned in the last entry that the dish wasn't all that difficult, but I think that having the first line of the recipe state "twice cooking the eggplant gives it a luscious texture and a deep, rich flavour" scared me! You mean I have two shots at ruining this dish!?

Step 1: roast eggplants in a single in oven. I can do that. good. (except they didn't fit in a single layer. Multiple trays emerge. yep, roast in oven)

Step 2: Cook in fry pan over low heat all the millions of ingredients I had prepared 'Hewy' style; oil, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, harissa, honey, tomato pesto

and lemon juice.

Step 3: Transfer eggplant to mixture turning once or twice. Easy. And yet the recipe goes ahead to scare me again

with "take care as the honey burns easily". What, are they just trying to make this difficult?!

Step 4: that's it. You've really just finished it. As long as you haven't burned it or turned it to mush by turning it too much, it's done. Can be eaten at room temperature. Woo hoo!

Now to the Tagine Style Lamb

Again, as I mentioned in the last post, I had bopped my way through smashing all the spices in the mortar and pestle and was happily mixing it all together in our new glass type mixing bowls while still listening to Stevie Wonder. Then I read that the mixture was supposed to make about 45 meatballs, not the 2o or so I had, so I had to put them all back in the bowl and make the meatballs again, this time smaller.

Once this had been done, I began stressing about the timing of everything again. Normally I wouldn't mind about this sort of thing, but as it is one of the things we get marked on for this challenge, it has been playing on my mind much more frequently. You see, once the meatballs were made, it came down to just before serving everything you need to do fifty things all at once. It leads you into a false sense of security that everything is sorted and you are home free.

Then the guests turn up half an hour early and all of my timings scribbled out on the opposite page of the recipe are put to waste!

I quickly scramble together the starter I had thought of which was just a basic Turkish bread heated up in the oven with a Moroccan dip (bought not made, yes I'm a cop out) and Persian Fetta. Meanwhile, still trying to fry off meatballs in a pan and getting splattered by hot oil spitting out at me.

The difference with our challenge and real cooks/chefs is that they don't have to socialise until the end of the meal. At the end the chef comes out to see the guests, they all clap and compliment the meal and he's all happy. Here, we have to serve and cook and prepare and talk to our guests all at once. This is where the timing of everything becomes very tricky! We don't want our guests to be sitting in the room all silent and waiting. Awkward!

So I flitted between sitting at the table and enjoying the dip and fetta and rushing to the kitchen to make the meatballs sauce. Onion, cinnamon, special mortar and pestled spice paste, tin of tomatoes, honey, chicken stock, then simmer for 20 minutes. (20 minutes to talk and eat more fetta)

Make couscous. Cover, let rest. (eat more fetta)

Serve.

Last time I was concerned with the 'plating up' of everything. This time I went with the hearty Middle Eastern appr

oach of setting it all out on the table and letting people serve themselves. I thought it looked good, especially in the fully prepared tagine (even if it wasn't cooked in it!)

For dessert I made Middle Eastern Rocky Road that I saw on a cooking segment of a show like Better Homes and Gardens or something along

those lines. Unfortunately, all I had to go by was a list of ingredients hastily scribbled onto the back of a serviette. Still, with the help of Google I made it.

To make it Middle Eastern, you added Turkish Delight and pistachio nuts. It was supposed to have dried cherries, but they were no where to be found unless I drove to Prahan and I wasn't going to do that just for a dessert! I served it with good vanilla ice cream and also coconut ice cream. Although the little blobs of ice cream didn't look how I wanted them to, the coconut ice cream was great!

All in all, not too bad a dinner. Despite the eggplant attack and flashbacks to cheesy Masterchef dancing.

Dangerous Eggplant and Stevie Wonder (part 1)

In this week's challenge I found myself using a mortar and pestle while listening to loud music. This of course meant that as I was singing and bopping away, the realisation that I looked like that chick from the start of Masterchef was very unnerving. I immediately ceased bopping and got down to the job at hand -

Tagine style Lamb with Honey and Harissa glazed Eggplants

Even though we have only been completing these challenges for a few weeks now, it has come to my attention that we have some patterns emerging. It seems that whoever is not cooking has to clean the house. This is only fair as we are having guests each week and it can't be left up to the cook to do everything! It also has become apparent that the best thing to listen to while cleaning (and therefore cooking) is our new Blue Ray version of Stevie Wonder live at last disc. So this week I found myself bopping along to Stevie and making Moroccan.

This weekend Dan was given special tickets to go to football and be waited on in special boxes. Me on the other hand had to clean the bath and soak a tagine. So much for the cook not having to clean! The recipe that Dan chose did not specifically say I had to use a tagine, but considering I got it for my birthday two and a half years ago, I think it's time I prepare it so it can be used! This is also why we get given the challenge on the Friday night, in case we have to soak a tagine for 24 hours!

Dan had to leave to go to his niece's 3rd birthday party so I got down to business (with my mortar and pestle and Stevie).After 24 hours of lazing in a bath, I had to cook it in an oven at 270 degrees celsius for two hours! This was now becoming quite high maintenance for something I was only using as a serving dish!

This was when i discovered an interesting fact. Eggplants can be dangerous!

Who would have thought that the firm purplish vegetable could be dangerous? Well, let me tell you, they are!! I was happily reading up my recipes and looking at the pictures, deciding that I needed as much of the eggplant as possible and that i should not just chop the whole stalk bit off at the top like I would normally do, but peel back the green bits

leaving a curved shape and more eggplant. That's when it BIT ME!! Well, 'cut' me would me more appropriate, I guess. Yes! Eggplants have tiny spiky bits that I cut my finger on! I knew no one would believe me so I took a photo!!

Luckily, no hospital visit was required and I could get on with making the honey and harissa glazed eggplants.

Apart from having to prepare fifty thousand little dishes of spices, like they do on Hewy's Cooking Adventures, this dish wasn't really that difficult. It was the same with the lamb one.

I decided that for this challenge, my biggest weakness was going to be timing. How would I get everything done at the right time, when it all seemed that it needed to be done at once?

(For those of you reading this as I write and upload it, you will be sad to know that my computer is about to go flat so I cannot finish this entry until a later stage! Think of it as a soap opera! Will it work out for Roz? Will she plate up on time? Will the horrible injury caused by the eggplant hinder her progress? Find out next time on....... it's not aeroplane food!!)