A couple of weeks ago we had our first Moveable Feast of 2014. It started with a delivery from Amazon of a book most of the group members hadn’t ordered but with instructions from our hosts that the recipes for the next Feast would come from the enclosed. The cookbook was Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.

I’d been thinking of adding Jerusalem to my collection (have I mentioned that I may have a slight addiction to cookbooks?) and was glad to receive it. As Moveable Feasts go it made things easy. The research was already done for us, we just had to select the recipe we were taking on.

I was the last to make my selection and since the mains and dessert had been chosen I decided to make two side dishes. The first was a rice pilaf dish made from Basmati and wild rice along with herbs, chickpeas, currants, and fried onions. The second dish, and the one I’ll highlight here, was a eggplant roasted with chermoula, topped with a bulgur salad.

Eggplant roasted with chermoula, topped with a bulgur salad

The recipe starts with chermoula – a paste made from spices, chilies, preserved lemon and olive oil. The fragrant paste is spread over eggplant halves that have been scored. Then the eggplant are baked until soft.

I placed the eggplant in a serving dish, topped it with the bulgur salad and served it with Greek yogurt on the side. Delicious! I also made basmati & wild rice with chickpeas, currants & herbs.

The other dishes we had included:

Unfortunately I missed getting pictures of:

• Watercress & chickpea soup with rose water & ras el hanout (pg 132)
• Cod cakes in tomato sauce (pg 225)

And finally, for dessert we had:

For me it was one of the best ways to experience a new cookbook. I spent a fair amount of time looking through the cookbook, reading through descriptions, and examining different ingredients. I was inspired by the dishes my fellow Feasters made and can’t wait to try them along with others.

Another great Feast in the books and a great new addition to my cookbook collection!