"Tafathalo"

Food is for sharing. There is no point cooking unless you have someone to cook for. The Arabic word "Tafathalo" translates to something along the lines of "do me the honour" and is used as an invitation to come to the table. I love the ceremonious implication of that word; the idea of inviting people to share your food with you.

I believe the best meals for sharing are those that can be eaten with the hands, and middle eastern dishes are perfect for this. To me there is nothing better than using a piece of khobez as a utensil to pick up wonderfully fragrant mouthfuls. So I set myself a challenge last night: I wanted to create a veggie meal that was perfect for sharing, inspired by middle eastern cooking, where the meat would not be missed.

Eat with your hands

I stumbled upon a delightful book during a stroll through the city on my lunch break last week - it is entirely devoted to veggie dishes from the Middle East - called Veggiestan. It is a jewel of a book, containing not only incredible veggie recipes, but also some enlightening insights into middle eastern ingredients, styles of cooking and food culture. I used this book as an inspiration to put together my middle eastern medley.

The spread

 My dinner guests last night were three South African meat-lovers, including a braai-loving lad who normally wouldn't feel satisfied with a meatless meal. Perfect. I wanted to create a spread of dishes with a variety of flavours, colours, and particularly textures. I often find that meat-lovers miss meat because so much veggie-food lacks a meaty texture. Enter the aubergine: fleshy and versatile, you can't go wrong. My aubergines with yogurt took centre stage, supported by: dolmades, falaffels, chickpea salad with roast pepper and herbs, stuffed olives, herby tomato and onion salad, hoummous, stuffed vine leaves, grilled halloumi and of course, khobez (middle eastern flatbread).

Aubergines with yogurt

I was overwhelmed by the positive response from my meat-loving dinner guests; in fact, I think they surprised themselves. They all agreed that the meal was delicious and perfect without the meat. Another victorious veggie meal for meat-lovers!

Tuck in!

Many ways with khobez