Matbucha

Hi there. I made matbucha, pronounced mott-boo-cha, where the 'ch' is the sound of clearing your throat. Matbucha is a Moroccan tomato dish that primarily consists of tomatoes, spicy peppers and garlic. I guess red peppers are often also put in there but I'm not sure. Technically you're supposed to make it with really ripe tomatoes but I had to make it with normal tomatoes. This is how it went down.

I cut up about 6 medium sized tomatoes into big chunks. I seeded and cut up 6 jalapenos, and chopped about 8 cloves of garlic, as shown below.


I then put all of these ingredients, as well as 1/4 cup of olive oil, and salt and cracked black pepper in my soup pot:


Next I opened up a big can of whole peeled tomatoes:


And poured them into the soup pot (aw yeah, action shot):


And then it looked like this:


I had these roasted red bell peppers hanging out in my fridge and decided that I wasn't going to use them for anything else


So I threw them in the pot:


And then it looked like this:


I then let these ingredients simmer, covered, for about an hour and a half, stirring every once in a while


Eventually the whole thing becomes pretty watery and at that point you want to let it cook half covered, to let the juices evaporate


...And finally, you end up with something like this:


All that fit in this little container:


I made a wheat challah to enjoy this with, but you do your thing

Baba Ganoush

I love food blogs that have lots of pictures, so from now on I will attempt to have more pictures of the steps of the recipe. For pesach I made baba ganoush for the first time. Here is how it went down.

Ingredients:
3 eggplants
5 tbsp mayo
juice of 1 lemon
4 cloves garlic
cumin
salt
pepper

I tryed charring the first eggplant over a burner but it just wasn't working out for me. My mom then told me that I could put all 3 eggplants on a baking sheet and broil them... so that's what I did. I turned on the broiler and let the tops of the eggplants get nice and black. I then flipped them over. I did this so that all sides got charred, about 20-30 minutes. They then looked like this:



As you can see, the eggplant is deflated and soft. The next step is to peel off the skin, making sure to leave all of the flesh.

Next, chop up all of the flesh and put it in a bowl:


I then blended this together:


... and then it looked like this:


Then I added the rest of the ingredients.


... and then it looked like this:


Tada! It was good but not the best. If I make this again, I don't think I'll blend it. I like seeing seeds in baba ganoush and the blending did away with those. Instead, I think I'll cook it longer and then mash it up with a fork or something. I think it had a really nice flavor though, and it wasn't too mayo-y which was nice.

Chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips

These are delicious. Probably my favorite cookie that I've made. I've made these before but this time I subbed peanut butter chips for chocolate chips. I love these cookies because they're so rich and are also really soft. They remain soft for days. Crispy cookies are not my thing. This is the recipe I used (but replaced the chocolate chips with peanut butter chips). It also makes me feel better because only 2 tbsp of butter are called for to make 12 cookies... but I'm sure the quarter pound of bittersweet chocolate more than makes up for it ;^)