Zaalouk is a real all-rounder; you can serve this dish as a salad, a side dish or a dip, and it tastes just as good served warm as it does at room temperature. It’s made mainly from aubergines and tomatoes and has a fruity yet earthy flavour.
It couldn’t be simpler to prepare. While many recipes treat the aubergines in all sorts of different ways, we find that the simplest method works best for us – we cook all the ingredients together in a heavy-based pan with a lid, following the brilliant cookbook *Casablanca* by Nargisse Benkabbou, which we highly recommend.
Some recipes call for peeled aubergines, whilst others use unpeeled ones. We recommend removing about half the skin using a vegetable peeler; this gives the best balance of skin to flesh.
We quarter tomatoes and remove the stalk; depending on their size, we also cut them into eighths. We then use our fingers to remove the seeds and the surrounding jelly.
Coat the bottom of a pan with a little olive oil and add the pieces of aubergine and tomato. Add peeled and roughly chopped garlic cloves, honey (vegans can use maple syrup, for example) and lemon juice.
Season with salt, smoked paprika (Pimentón de la Vera), ground cumin and a pinch of cayenne to taste. We like a bit of a kick. We start off carefully with the salt, adding just a little at first and tasting the dish more closely towards the end.
Mix everything together thoroughly, then bring the mixture to a gentle simmer over a medium-high heat with the lid on. After 30 minutes, during which we stir only very occasionally, it will look like this:
Now mash the vegetables with a potato masher, but not too finely – they should still have some texture. Alternatively, you can use a fork, but you’ll need to be careful not to turn them into a purée. If the mixture is still too runny, you can reheat it without a lid to allow the liquid to evaporate. Finally, mix in roughly chopped coriander leaves and stalks and season to taste with salt.
Enjoy.
And may the taste be with you.
Ingredients (for 4 people as a starter or side dish):
4–5 tbsp olive oil
2–3 aubergines (approx. 500 g)
4–5 tomatoes (approx. 400 g)
4 garlic cloves
½ tbsp honey or vegan alternative
Juice of half a lemon
½–1 tsp salt, to taste
1 tsp Pimentón de la Vera (alternatively: paprika)
2 tsp ground cumin
A pinch of cayenne, to taste
1 bunch of fresh coriander
