Meike Peters | eat in my kitchen

What an amazing anniversary! Thank you so much for your sweet wishes and support of eat in my kitchen. It's been a perfect celebration of an extraordinary year and the beginning of a new chapter, the second year of the blog!

Let's start the new week with an easy pasta dish, chickpeas (canned, so there's no soaking and cooking involved), grilled aubergine slices, lemon and basil! I got the inspiration for this composition from a sandwich which is very popular in Israel, it made it onto the blog last January, the fantastic Sabih. Velvety hummus, grilled aubergines and a boiled egg on juicy homemade olive bread, it tastes divine! Our godchild's father told me about this sandwich classic from his home country, he praised it with such passion that I had to try it. It became a new standard, with great potential to inspire various recipes. For my linguine, I left out the egg, although I think it would have fit but instead I added lemon and basil for an aromatic southern Mediterranean feeling. The aubergine and chickpeas were so smooth, almost sweet, that it needed a bit of a contrast, a task that my beloved lemon zest always manages with ease.

When I grill aubergines, I always prepare two or three of them right away. You can use them for your pizza or roll them up with ricotta. Although they need (and soak up) quite a bit of olive oil, I found that you can minimize it by stacking them on top of each other as soon as you take them out of the oven. I brush them with a thin layer of oil on both sides before they cook. Don't worry, they tend to look a bit dry at first when they are done but they will turn into perfect juicy and oily bites after a couple minutes of soaking and softening each other.

Linguine with Chickpeas, Grilled Aubergine and Lemon

For 4 people you need

linguine pasta 400g / 14 ounces
chickpeas, canned, rinsed and drained, 300g / 10.5 ounces
large aubergine, cut into 1/2cm / 1/4″ slices, 1
garlic, crushed, 1 clove
olive oil
salt
black peppercorns, crushed in a mortar, for the topping, to taste
lemon zest, for the topping, to taste
basil leaves, a small handful

Cook the pasta in salted water al dente and keep some of the cooking water.

Brush the aubergines with olive oil on both sides, season them with salt and pepper and grill them in the oven until golden brown on both sides, they will darken partly but that’s fine. Mine needed 7 minutes on one side and 5 minutes on the other but that depends on the oven. Set the aubergines aside and stack them, that will keep them moist and soft. Cut them into thick slices.

In a pan, heat a splash of olive oil, add the garlic and cook it for 1 minute on medium heat. Add the chickpeas, season with salt and pepper, close with a lid and cook for 4 minutes on medium-low heat. Add the pasta and a little of the water they cooked in and season with salt. Stir in the aubergine and sprinkle with the crushed black peppercorns, lemon zest and basil.

Enjoy warm or with short pasta as a salad.