This dish of roasted and spiced aubergines is an excellent vegetarian lunch.

If you happen not to be two greedy people (just a couple of couch-potatoes with normal appetites), you may find you have a little of this left over. Chop it and serve it as a dip – it’s really very good!

Recipe for roasted and spiced aubergines

For lunch for two greedy people; or lunch for six with ham and a couple of other salads

Ingredients

• 2 fat aubergines
• Olive oil for roasting, frying and for the dressing
• 180 ml/¾ cup thick yoghurt
• 1 tsp mild curry powder
• ¼ tsp turmeric
• 1 onion
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• ½ tsp coriander seeds
• 2 tbsps raisins (or dried cranberries or sour cherries)
• 2 tbsps rum, brandy, whisky…. or Earl Grey tea – optional
• Smoked salt
• Freshly ground black pepper or a pinch of Urfa pepper flakes or some smoked paprika
• Crusty bread to eat with it

Method

1. Take the yoghurt out of the fridge. You need to get it to room temperature.
2. Soak whatever dried fruit you are using in the hooch or the Earl Grey tea – this is an optional step, but it does make the fruit juicier.
3. Preheat the oven to 210°C.
4. In a cooler oven, warm the plates and a pretty serving platter.
5. Line a large roasting tray with foil or silicone paper, and oil it.
6. Cut the aubergines into slices about a generous centimetre… just less than half an inch…thick.
7. Lay on the roasting tray, drizzle over some oil, and sprinkle over some salt and pepper or the pepper flakes or the paprika.
8. Roast for about 15 minutes at the top of the oven. After 15 minutes, take out, turn over, drizzle with more oil, and seasoning, and return to the oven for another 15 minutes, or until cooked through and starting to turn golden.
9. Meanwhile, in a smallish frying pan dry fry the two seeds. After a couple of minutes, after you’ve enjoyed the fabulous waft of spicy scents, remove to a pestle and mortar. Don’t wash up the pan!
10. In the same pan, get some oil warm. Peel and chop the onion, and gently fry, with a pinch of salt, and half a teaspoon of curry powder, until golden…usually about ten minutes. Add the soaked fruit with its soaking liquor to warm through.
11. Crush the seeds.
12. Add the the yoghurt, the turmeric, and the other half teaspoon of curry powder to the crushed seeds in the pestle and mortar. Add two tablespoons of olive oil, and some salt and pepper, or pepper flakes.
13. Put the aubergine slices, overlapping a little (they look better this way) on the warmed platter. Dollop the spiced yoghurt over them. Scatter over the onion and the dried fruit, and serve with the crusty bread.

This post is dedicated to Edmund Van Der Klugt.