'Summery Middle Eastern Supper'

I love menus. In fact, I am something of a menu tart. I love putting them together, and I love following other people's suggestions. So for me the 'menu suggestions' in my cookbooks are always super exciting - I can't help myself.

I made this menu, the 'Summery Middle Eastern Supper', on Friday night. It is from 'The Vegan Gourmet', a great little cookbook. Some seriously yummy and easy stuff in here! As it is indeed quite summery here at the moment, it seemed like a good choice of menu. The menu was made up of three recipes...



Curried Eggplant And Garbanzo Patties, seen here posing on a sandwich with mixed lettuce and chutney - AKA my lunch for the following day. These are pretty easy to make, but are a bit fragile. I added extra breadcrumbs to them to help them stay together more, but they definitely need to be treated with care. They are baked, rather than fried, so that at least stops them falling apart in the pan when you are trying to flip them! Fragility aside, these are tasty little morsels. I only made half the patties on this night, the rest of the mixture is currently frozen awaiting future use.



Bulgur With Tomatoes, Mint and Toasted Pine Nuts was a great salad and extremely quick and easy to make. It has wonderful flavours, and was made with mint picked from my own herb - hurrah! The pine nuts really add all sorts of nummy tastes to it. I kept the left overs for various lunches and it keeps extremely well.



Cauliflower Sauteed With Peaches And Cardamom. Interesting. I really did like it, but I think with the sweetness involved you would have to be in the mood for it. It was really fast to make, and can be served at room temperature as well if you want to make it ahead of time. I think it is better warmed though.



And here it is, all done up and ready to jump into my belly. There's also some raw cucumber spears on the plate, and I served it with iced peppermint tea (so good on a hot day). It was a pretty nommish dinner, and all came together very nicely. It's a great dinner to put together ahead of time. Both the salad and the saute can be served at room temperature, and the patties can be mixed and shaped ahead of time. So all that is left to do is pop the patties in the oven when the time comes, and then practically instant dinner. Well, not really instant because you spent the time beforehand putting the rest of it together. But that was then, and this is now. So instant.

And now I must be off to bed. I spent all day baking Christmas themed goodies, with more to go tomorrow. So expect a sugar-laden post tomorrow night. I have to say, I am seriously chuffed with some of the stuff I have made. Tee hee!