Cooking the Chronicle – Mar 14

Well, I have fallen behind on my Cooking the Chronicle posts, and although I did cook this yummy eggplant dip (“Eggplant Salad,” Mar 14 ) the week it came out it took me a few weeks to write about it. Life is crazy with three under three and although we love to cook and make time for it regularly, sitting down and writing my thoughts about the current recipe often falls off my to-do list. I was very grateful that Jessica Grann took a few weeks off to prepare her Pesach content, because it gave me time to catch up (and do some Pesach cleaning of my own).

Let’s get to it. This eggplant salad is like a dreamy salatim you’d find on any table in Israel. I think salad is used loosely here in the American sense, it reads more as a dip to me, which is great because I love all eggplant dips… fried, roasted, grilled, with mayo, with garlic, with tomatoes, etc. I prefer it over hummus any day of the week.

I took one liberty with this recipe and opted to cook the eggplant directly over the flame on my gas stovetop. I have always wanted to try this, but never had a reason to until now. Because of this, I think my dip had a slightly darker color than the photo of Grann’s and it had a wonderfully smokey flavor to it. I did not include my toddler in this step of the process, but she loved shaking up the dressing and sprinkling the nuts on top of the dish.

To me, the tomatoes didn’t add anything, though the color contrast was really nice. But you must add the olive oil, spices, herbs, and pistachios to make the dish feel complete.

Like suggested, we served with some Mediterranean staples—pita, feta, Israeli salad, and salmon. It was delicious, my favorite kind of meal.