Roasted Eggplant With Tahini, Pine Nuts, and Lentils

This dish of eggplant roasted until caramelized and tender, served over stewed lentils with an extraordinarily light and creamy tahini sauce and crunchy pine nuts, was dinner and lunch for more meals than I care to count a couple of weeks back. Not that I'm complaining: It's extremely good.

Lentil and Roasted Eggplant Salad

This eggplant salad is just downright delicious - lentils cooked in a seasoned broth topped with plump caramelised eggplant with a zesty lemon dressing.

Middle Eastern Roasted Eggplant with Couscous

Middle Eastern Roasted Eggplant with Couscous - 15 minutes prep for this fragrant melt-in-your-mouth eggplant piled high with a fresh couscous. Divine starter or as a meal. (Vegan Tahini Drizzle recipe included as an alternative to dolloping yoghurt on!)

Braised Chickpeas and Vegetables with Couscous, Harissa Yogurt, and Soft Eggs from 'Flour, Too'

Couscous is a wonderful pantry staple. It's the fastest pasta (or any starchy grain) I know how to cook, and its fluffy texture and mild flavor pair well with just about anything you throw at it. In Joanne Chang's new cookbook Flour, Too, she steams the pasta with a rainbow of summer vegetables and a couple of cups of slowly braised chickpeas. Not content with this everyday flavor profile, Chang flavors the dish with North African flair.

Charred Eggplant and Tomatoes with Harissa and Mint

Young, firm eggplants are the best for this dish. Cook them just till they char and become tender, any longer and they will turn mushy. After a few seconds, they will absorb all the oil in the pan; they will cook just fine without the need for more.

Moroccan Merguez Ragout with Poached Eggs

For those with a passion for runny yolks, it doesn't get much better than Shakshuka, that Middle Eastern dish of eggs poached in a spiced tomato sauce. Of course, there is one way to improve on the dish and that would be by adding chunks of Moroccan merguez à la this: Moroccan Merguez Ragout with Poached Eggs from Amanda Hesser's and Merrill Stubbs' The Food52 Cookbook.

Stovetop Eggplant With Harissa, Chickpeas, and Cumin Yogurt

Eggplants have always been a difficult vegetable for me. They come in different shapes, sizes, colors, and stripes and are surrounded by dos and don'ts. But with enough delicious recipes under your belt, it's pretty easy to overlook the post-cooking appearance and realize that all those dos and don'ts are really more suggestions than hard-and-fast rules. This recipe, which combines small Italian eggplants cooked whole in olive oil along with harissa, chickpeas, and tomatoes, is one such preparat...

Shakshuka (North African–Style Poached Eggs in Spicy Tomato Sauce)

Shakshuka is a versatile and vegetarian one-pan egg and tomato dish that's perfect for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts from 'Jerusalem'

As any fan of Yotam Ottolenghi's previous book, Plenty, knows, the man is an expert when it comes to eggplant. In his and his partner Sami Tamimi's new book Jerusalem: A Cookbook, there are copious recipes for eggplant—stuffed, puréed, roasted, baked, and everything in between. In their Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts, they fill the silky, humble nightshade with a warmly spiced blend of gamey ground lamb, sweet onions, and a smattering of pine nuts.

Couscous and Mograbiah With Oven-Dried Tomatoes From 'Ottolenghi'

Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's cafe, Ottolenghi, serves a multitude of grain-based salads. Many are rice, barley, or couscous-based. This version in their recently re-released cookbook, however, stood out for its inclusion of mograbiah, a Middle Eastern semolina pasta much like Israeli couscous or Sardinian fregola.