This week there is a heated discussion going on in the Netherlands about a “50 day green diet”, a company started by a bunch of girls. The so-called experts (dietitians, culinary journalists, people who work for governmental subsidized company’s related to food etc.) claim that eating only plant based food is dangerous(!!!). Needless to say that I do not agree and so decided to leave the bickering parties to it and mind my own business.

Meaning that I happily continue my cooking, busy as ever exploring the plant based possibilities, trying out new things and making my own recipes. It seems that with the beginning of a new season I found new inspiration.

This salad for instance is something I made up myself. Oven roasted eggplant and onions, mixed with fried chickpeas, dates, chili pepper and a touch of date syrup. It was heavenly, delicious and extremely satisfying! I served it with bulgur also mixed with a drop of date syrup.

I roasted the eggplant and quartered onions (red or white, whatever you have available) with some sea salt , black pepper and olive oil in the oven at 200 ℃ for 20 minutes or so. In the meantime I chopped up a hand full of fresh dates, a red chili pepper, two gloves of black garlic and rinsed a can of chickpeas (the moist of the chickpeas I saved for plant based merengue). Fried the four of them in coconut oil and seasoned it with cumin and black pepper. In the meantime I prepared some bulgur the usual way. When done I placed the vegetables in a dish and poured some date syrup over everything and added a drop to the bulgur as well. This dish had all the flavors possible, it was sweet, spicy and a bit bitter as well and it delivered some familiar sounds from across the table……😋