dinner for 3

I had two friends over for dinner. The menu was:

1. Apéro (from aperitif, "before food"): Toasted bread with avocado dip and eggplant dip
2. Entrée (in French it means appetizer): Oven potatoes flavored with salted lamb
3. Main course ("plat de resistance"): My own version of "imam" a turkish oven dish (vegetarian)
4. Salad (Yes, here they serve the salad last, to refresh your taste buds before dessert. I was surprized to find that out)
5. Chocolate soufflé (individual soufflés) with melted chocolate on top (overkill I know, but it's allowed in chocolate, "non"?)
   

And now the recipes.

Toasted bread
Very easy. I got two baguettes from the local boulangerie, sliced
and toasted them slightly in the oven - yes I didn't make bread
myself, the boulangerie still beats my bread by far...

Avocado dip
Two avocados, juice of half a lime, salt, pepper. Mix.

Eggplant dip

• Half an eggplant (it was leftover from the main dish).
• One clove of garlic
• Salt, pepper
  

Preparation:
Cut the eggplant in 2cm-thick slices, salt very generously and let sit for 1h to get the bitterness out. Beware, a black liquid will drip and make a mess. Wash the salt away, put a bit of the family olive oil in a pan and fry the eggplant slices for 30 seconds on each side, they will suck up the oil, don't worry that's normal. Set aside for the excess oil to drip out, for about 2min. Heat the oven (i was already cooking 2 other things, so it was preheated). Put on an oven pan the eggplant slices. Peel the garlic and slice it in half (slice in the dimension that gives thin halves). Put the garlic in the oven pan with the eggplant, salt and pepper to taste, and put it in the oven. Wait until the eggplant is done, I think I let it about 1 hour, you can test with a fork, it should be soft and dissolv-y. The garlic should be cooked too. Take out of the oven, let cool for a bit, drain
the excess oil (they will spit out some of the oil they soaked during frying). I peeled them and threw away the peel, but that's up to you, i guess it's good if you leave it in, too. Mash with a fork until smooth. Served both hot and cold. The French called it "caviar d'aubergines" which I though made it sound more gourmet than it is.

Entrée
Oven potatoes with a bit of lamb for taste.
OK, I know this isn't really an entrée dish, it could be a main course. But I liked cooking it so who cares. To explain this I have to give context, so, here's the whole story.

The other day (1 week ago, maybe more, I don't remember), I had some friends over for dinner (not the same ones). I wanted to make a lamb dish, but the butcher would only sell me the whole 1.7kg of lamb shoulder, not just 700gr of it, as I very politely asked using my awful, broken, immigrant's French. Oh well. So I got home with a lot of lamb, I cut it into pieces, took out the 700 of mostly fatless meat that I needed, and was left with bones, pieces of fat, and more meat. I threw away most of the pieces of fat and was left with two big chunks of meat, and some bones (with meat on them). So, I made buillion from the bones (what else) and saved it in the fridge for later, it tastes much better than the buillion cubes... I took the bones, meat and vegetables left from the buillion making to work the next day and had a nice, quite healthy lunch.

Anyway, I was stuck with the two chunks of lamb meat that were left, but I didn't want to cook more lamb in the same week. So I decided to cure the lamb. At worst, I'd throw it away. I made a cure-liquid (I don't know a better word for
it) with salt, water, sugar, and a few spices (thyme, oregano, pepper), by boiling everything together for 2mins. I let that cool to room temperature, put the meat in a tupperware container, poured the juice on top, covered it and put it in the fridge. I have one piece left still, maybe I should take it out, wrap it and dry it for a month, see what happens.

Back to the task at hand, I wanted to use a piece (small, admittedly) of semi-cured/salted lamb to flavor my oven potatoes. I got small red-skin potatoes, washed them thoroughly, and cut them in quarters leaving the skin on. I put a bit of salt(i should have avoided that, given the meat), pepper and oregano on the potatoes, a bit (about 3-4 spoons) of olive oil and mixed
until all potatoes were oiled--this oil wasn't from my family's produce, it was from Despoina's, just as good!

Then I washed the lamb piece, put it among the potatoes, added a cup of water and put the oven pan in the (pre-heated) oven. I checked every now and then, and added a bit more water when it had dried up, but that depends on the oven. I'm still learning my new oven, so it needs care now in the beginning. It came out quite good, the lamb fat melted and the potatoes tasted very nice. The lamb was a little salty compared to my usual outcomes, but then again I don't like too much salt, my guests quite politely said they liked the meat too. So that was entrée (appetizer).

Main course
Imam (almost):

• 3 eggplants
• 2 bell peppers: 1 green, 1 yellow
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 zucchini
• 4 onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 5 spoons of tomato puree
• 1 pinch of sugar(optional)
• salt, pepper
• plenty of olive oil (about 1-2 cups, for frying)

Preparation:
Cut and salt the eggplants to take out the bitterness. Usually I slice them at length, and then stuff the slices with the other vegetables. This time I cut them in round slices, around 2cm thick. Fry (slightly) the eggplants and layer the bottom of an oven pan. If you have leftovers you can make eggplant dip. Cut the onions in rings or half rings, and fry them until slightly soft (not much). Layer on top of eggplants. Same with the zucchini (cut in 1cm slices). Cut the peppers thin and layer on top, and tomato slices above (don't fry the peppers and tomatoes). Add salt and pepper, and a pinch of sugar. Throw away the left frying oil (some recipes pour it on top, but that's too oily then). Add the tomato puree as evenly as you can. Slice the garlic very thin and also spread evenly on top. Add herbs if you want, I added a bit of parsil, basil & oregano. Pour half a cup of water (more like sprinkle it) to take some of the herbs spices and puree down with it to the rest of the vegetables (depending on your oven, the water might be unnecessary, then you might want to put the herbs in with the layers,
not on top). Put in the oven (medium/low heat), and wait. It took me less time than I expected to prepare everything, so I left everything in the oven for 3 hours, in low heat (gas oven, set to 2 on a 10-scale). It all came out well cooked, but not dissolved (just right). I guess the vegetables could be done in under 1 hour on medium/high heat, and so could the lamb, but I overestimated the prep
time...

Salad
Some kind of lettuce I got from the farmer's market torn by hand (I learned that you're not supposed to cut lettuce with a knife in France...) , small cherry tomatoes halved, green onions chopped, a bit of dill, and a vinaigrette (mustard,
honey, balsamic & wine vinegar, olive oil).

Dessert
Chocolate soufflé: In chocolate we trust.

• 5 eggs separated: make marengue with the whites, beat the yolks with a bit of sugar (I didn't measure, it looked to be around 1/2 cup) until pale.
• Melt 200g chocolate (1 bar) with a bit of butter (fresh butter I bought from the I-sell-100-million-cheeses-guy at the farmers market this morning), let cool, and slowly pour in the yolk mix (keep stirring).
• Fold marengue in, lovingly and tenderly... (Which reminds me, I need a rubber spatula, I miss my old one).
• Butter and flour the ramequins, pour the mixture in. One could put it in the fridge for 2h and serve as a chocolate mousse, but you have to trust your eggs to serve them raw...
  
• I put it in the fridge for 1h, and then cooked in medium pre-heated oven for 10 mins. Being cool helped keep the interior slightly uncooked and melt-y.

It was nice....

OK, we ate all that, we started with light lager beer, then we split a Chimay blue (trappiste beer, nice!) during the lamb and potatoes, and then we had a bottle of white wine with the main course and a last glass with salad. I served dessert with cold raki, I think I got them a bit drunk.