Eggplant and Chickpea Fatteh with Tahini Yogurt and Toasted Sesame
Torn whole wheat bread crisped in the oven under roasted eggplant and warm cumin chickpeas, covered in garlicky tahini yogurt and finished with toasted sesame and paprika oil.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Fatteh is what gets made in Levantine kitchens with yesterday's bread, and once you have made it once you start looking forward to bread going stale. The idea is simple and it is the reason the dish works: something crisp on the bottom, something warm and soft in the middle, something cool and tangy poured over the top. Everything is timed so that the bread has about a minute to soften before it reaches the table, still holding its shape but no longer sharp. I put this on the table for a slow weekend breakfast, and I have also made it at seven at night for people who did not want a proper dinner.
The eggplant is where the cooking attention goes. Cut the cubes bigger than feels right, at about three quarters of an inch, because eggplant shrinks by half in a hot oven and small pieces turn to paste. Give them room on the sheet pan and do not crowd them, or they steam and stay pale and squeaky. Twenty two minutes at 425°F gets you cubes that are bronze on two sides and creamy in the middle. The chickpeas go onto the same pan for the last eight minutes, which dries their skins slightly and lets the cumin toast against the hot metal rather than sitting there tasting dusty.
The sauce is three ingredients and it takes a minute. Tahini, cold yogurt, lemon, and grated garlic go into a bowl and get whisked until the mixture goes several shades paler and thickens, then loosens again with a spoonful of cold water. It should pour in a slow ribbon. The last thing is the sesame and paprika oil, which sizzles for thirty seconds in a small pan and turns bright orange, and that is what goes over the white sauce so you get the contrast you see in the photograph. It eats like a plate somebody built for you rather than something you spooned out of a container.
Ingredients
- 2 cups canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed, a few skins slipped off if they float
- 1 3/4 cups plain nonfat Greek yogurt, cold
- 1 medium globe eggplant, about 14 oz, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
- 2 1/2 slices whole wheat pita or country bread, torn into rough pieces
- 3 1/2 tbsp well-stirred tahini, scraped from the bottom of the jar
- 3 tbsp sesame seeds
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
- 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 3 small cloves garlic, grated on a microplane
- 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped
- 1/4 cup mint leaves, torn at the last minute
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
Instructions
- Roast the eggplant: Heat the oven to 425°F. Toss the eggplant cubes with 1 tbsp of the olive oil on a large sheet pan and spread them out so no two pieces touch. Roast for 22 to 25 minutes, turning them once at the halfway mark, until they are deep bronze on at least two sides and give completely when pressed with a spoon.
- Warm the chickpeas with cumin: After the eggplant has been in for about fifteen minutes, push it to one side of the pan, add the drained chickpeas and the cumin to the empty half, and roll them around in what oil is there. Give everything eight more minutes together. The chickpea skins should tighten and a few should split.
- Crisp the bread: Spread the torn bread on a second small sheet pan and toast it in the same oven for six to eight minutes, until the pieces are dry all the way through and snap rather than bend. Take them out as soon as they are the color of a paper bag, since they go from toasted to burnt in under a minute at this temperature.
- Whisk the tahini yogurt: Put the yogurt, tahini, lemon juice, and grated garlic in a bowl and whisk hard. The mixture will seize and go pale and stiff, which is what it is supposed to do. Add cold water a tablespoon at a time, whisking, until it pours in a slow ribbon off the whisk. Taste it and add more lemon if it needs a sharper edge.
- Sizzle the sesame oil: Put the remaining 1 tbsp olive oil and the sesame seeds in the smallest pan you own over medium heat. Swirl for about ninety seconds, until the seeds turn gold and start to pop and smell nutty, then take the pan off the heat, stir in the paprika, and keep swirling for ten seconds so it blooms in the residual heat without scorching.
- Layer and serve: Scatter the crisped bread across a wide shallow platter or divide it among four bowls. Pile the hot eggplant and chickpeas over it, pour the tahini yogurt across the middle so some bread stays exposed, and spoon the sesame and paprika oil over the top. Finish with the parsley and mint and bring it to the table straight away.
Variations
- Fried egg on top: Set a fried egg over each bowl so the yolk runs down through the bread and the sauce.
- Roasted cauliflower: Use cauliflower florets in place of the eggplant and roast them the same way until the edges char.
- Pomegranate and walnut: Scatter pomegranate seeds and toasted walnuts over the top for a sweet and sour crunch against the sauce.
- Tomato and mint: Fold blistered cherry tomatoes into the chickpeas so their juices soak into the bread underneath.
- Hotter and smokier: Swap the sweet paprika for smoked paprika and add a pinch of chile flakes to the sizzling oil.
Storage & Leftovers
This is a dish to eat the hour it is made, because the whole point is crisp bread under soft toppings, and by morning the bread has given up. What does keep is every component on its own, so plan for that rather than for leftovers of the assembled bowl.
The roasted eggplant and chickpeas keep four days in a sealed container and reheat well spread on a sheet pan at 400°F for six minutes, which brings back some of the browning a refrigerator takes away. The tahini yogurt keeps five days and thickens as it sits, so whisk in a spoonful of cold water before you pour it.
The crisped bread keeps two days in a paper bag at room temperature, not in a sealed container, where it will go soft overnight. Refresh it in a 350°F oven for three minutes. The sesame and paprika oil is best made fresh, since it takes ninety seconds and the smell of the seeds toasting is half of it.
Notes & Tips
- Cut the eggplant in big cubes: Three quarters of an inch, no smaller. Eggplant loses half its volume in the oven and small pieces cook to nothing before they brown.
- Give the pan room: Cubes touching each other steam. If your sheet pan looks crowded, use two, because uncrowded eggplant is the whole difference between bronze and gray.
- Stir the tahini jar properly: The oil separates and sits on top, so the first spoonful out of an unstirred jar is mostly oil and the last is mostly paste. Stir all the way to the bottom with a table knife.
- Use cold water in the sauce: Cold water loosens a seized tahini sauce smoothly. Warm water makes it slack and dull, and it will not hold that pale, thick, pourable texture.
- Watch the sesame seeds closely: Ninety seconds is the whole window. Take the pan off the heat when they are gold, because they carry on cooking in the hot oil and go bitter fast.
- Assemble at the last minute: The bread has about a minute of crispness once the sauce lands. Have everyone at the table before you pour.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Chickpeas, yogurt, tahini, and eggplant are what make this hold together as a meal rather than a snack. The chickpeas give it weight and fiber, the yogurt and tahini turn into a sauce with real protein in it, and the eggplant brings the soft, savory middle that everything else is built around.
- Tahini is nothing more than sesame seeds ground to a paste, and it carries the calcium and the iron of those seeds into the sauce along with its bitterness, which the lemon and garlic keep in check.
- Greek yogurt has been strained, which is why a spoonful stands up on its own and why there is so much protein in it. It is also what keeps the sauce cool against the hot chickpeas coming out of the oven.
- Eggplant roasted hard turns creamy and sweet in a way it never manages in a pan, and the skin left on is where most of its fiber and its dark color sit.
- Sesame seeds swirled in hot oil with paprika are the last thing that happens and the first thing you smell. Toasting wakes up their oils, and the seeds crackle against the soft eggplant in a way that makes the bowl worth slowing down for.
- As you eat, listen for the bread still crackling under the sauce and notice how quickly it softens, and let that be the reason you sit down properly rather than eating this over the counter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of bread works best?
Any sturdy whole wheat bread that has gone a day or two past fresh. Pita torn into pieces is traditional and crisps fastest, and a dense country loaf gives you bigger craggy shards that stay crisp longer under the sauce. Soft sandwich bread turns to dust in the oven and is the one thing to avoid.
Do I have to salt and drain the eggplant first?
Modern eggplant is bred without the bitterness that step was invented to fix, so it is not necessary here. Cutting the cubes generously and giving them a hot uncrowded pan does more for the texture than salting ever did.
My tahini sauce went stiff and grainy. Is it ruined?
Not at all, that is the normal behavior of tahini meeting acid and it means you are on the right track. Keep whisking and add cold water a spoonful at a time. It will loosen suddenly and turn smooth and pale. Cold water works better than warm.
Can I make the whole thing ahead for a weekday?
Roast the eggplant and chickpeas and whisk the sauce the night before. In the morning, warm the vegetables on a sheet pan, crisp the bread while the oven is on, and assemble. That way the only thing done at the last minute is the layering, which takes two minutes.