Musakkaa- مسقعة الباذنجان

Musakkaa is a popular dish in the Mediterranean countries. I have listed a basic vegetarian version of this recipe here although there are different variations such as adding cooked ground beef or lamb, or mix cooked chickpeas, add green peppers, garlic or hot spicy peppers, depending on what you like in your dish.

Ingredients:
-Two big eggplant peeled and sliced into ½ inch thickness
-Canola oil for frying
-1 medium diced onion
- 4 medium size diced fresh or canned diced tomatoes
- Small can of tomato paste
- Salt and black pepper to taste
-1/2 to 1 cup water

Method:
Peel eggplants and cut into 1 cm (1/2 inch) thick slices.
Brown lightly with oil on both sides, You may deep fry it too for faster results.
Remove from pan, drain from oil over paper towels.
Layer eggplants in a shallow baking pan.
In another pot, sauté the diced onions. Add the diced tomato, tomato paste, water, salt and pepper. This will be your sauce that you will add to the layered eggplant in the baking pan.Boil the sauce for about five minutes. It will continue cooking when you bake it with the eggplants.
Pour the sauce mixture over eggplants and spread evenly. Top with sliced tomato if you like.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for about 45 minutes in a 420-450 Fahrenheit degree oven (depending on your oven temperature) until the edges are turning brown and the tomato sauce looks and smells cooked!
You may remove the foil the last 5-10 minutes to brown the top .
Serve hot or at room temperature with white rice on the side.

Stuffed Grape Leaves With The Works- ورق عنب محشي

This is an easy recipe for stuffed grape leaves. It is time consuming which is the case of most dishes cooked in the Arabic kitchen. I usually stuff about a dozen small zucchinis and another dozen of baby eggplants and add them to the same pot with the grape leaves.
You need to hollow the zucchinis and the eggplants with this special tool that takes out the inside to make space for the stuffing.
When stuffing the zucchinis and the eggplants make sure that you only stuff them half way with the rice mix, because when rice is cooked, it expands 3 times its size before cooking, otherwise you will end up with a meal full of rice that expanded beyond its space!
It takes about a pound (half a kilogram) or a little bit more to have a decent size pot that would feed a family of four or five. You may stuff tomatoes or bell pepper also and add to the pot.
This meal is vegetarian, cooked with olive oil and lemon juice. For the stuffing you need the following
Ingredients:
*1 ½ cups washed and drained white short grain rice( Egyptian rice)
*one bunch of finally cut parsley.
*4-5 medium size diced tomatoes or a small can of tomato paste. *Two finally diced onions.
*Salt and pepper to taste.
*About 1/3 cup of olive oil.
You may add fresh or dry mint to the stuffing mix.
Method:
Layer the bottom of your pot with washed and thinly sliced potatoes, about three or four big ones, mix it with salt, pepper and olive oil. Layer the stuffed vegetables and the rolled grape leaves in a nice way in your pot so when the meal is fully cooked you can invert it to a big platter and it would look nice. You may take the grape leaves rolls and the other vegetables out and assemble them in a nice way on a platter. I also cut up fresh tomatoes and add it up to the top layer of the pot before it starts cooking. Cook for about 2.5 to three hours on high heat for the first 20 minutes or until you hear it boiling, then lower the heat and let simmer for the rest of the time. add the olive oil at the beginning and half way through the cooking process add the lemon juice of two to three lemons, depending on how sour you like it . You may add tomato sauce to it also, but not necessary.
Make sure that there is enough liquid in it to cook, you may add water too if the liquids are not enough to cook the meal.
Cook until all the rice is saturated with the liquids that you added. Turn of the heat, let stand for at least 20 minutes before inverting the pot to allow for all the extra liquid to be absorbed.
This meal is served at room temperature or cold, but you may serve it hot.
You may Google this recipe, you will find many variations of it depending on who posted it and where they are in the Mediterranean. Some variation of the same recipe are stuffing the grape leaves with beef or lamb and rice mix, then you would use only cooking oil instead of olive oil. It seems like a complicated recipe but it is not really, it just takes a long time to prepare.