I would much rather write about things that I enjoy, however. Unfortunately these tend to be less often exams, and more often the things I do to avoid preparing for them. Today, as with many other days, my procrastination has been food. Mum just taught me how to make the most glorious snack, and I feel obliged to share.
When Mum lived in Rome, she had Turkish neighbours. Apparently she used to go over and have afternoon tea with them after work. Today she came home from the supermarket with an eggplant and told me that she was going to feed it to me. Now, I have always been skeptical of eggplant (any vegetable that seems "meaty" makes me suspicious for some reason), but the prospect of Turkish food excites me.
The dish we made is very simple, and very very yummy. It is essentially just fried eggplant, salted, with a yoghurt and garlic dip. Seems a lot fancier than the effort it takes.
We began by washing the eggplant, and cutting it in to slices (about 1cm thick). We then sprinkled them with salt, and left them to sit on a plate for about an hour (apparently the salt sucks the bitterness out, or something).
After an hour we rinsed the slices under a cold tap, and then left them to sit on a paper towel so all the water was absorbed. The slices were then fried in a hot pan in a little bit of olive oil, until they were nicely browned on both sides.
When all the slices were fried, we sprinkled them with a tiny bit of salt and left them on a plate to cool.
I tried one before we'd put any dressing on them but it's a bit weird. Mum advised that they need a good slathering of yoghurt. We used about a cup of our "home made" (ie: Easiyo Yoghurt Maker) Greek yoghurt, mixed with a clove of crushed garlic. I'm sure that any Greek yoghurt will work, though.
We just left everything on a plate and various family members popped past and spooned the dressing on to them, eating it as finger food. I'm sure I'll be making this as a snack in the future - om nom nom!
