Grilled courgettes and aubergines with three sauces and herbed rice
Roasted courgettes and aubergines served on a bed of garlic yoghurt, with a roasted tomato sauce and a tahini-harissa sauce. Alongside, fluffy rice with parsley, spring onion and lemon.
About this recipe
A summer dish built in layers: cold yoghurt underneath, hot vegetables on top, and the sauces served alongside so everyone builds their own plate. Nothing is combined in the pan — it all meets on the plate.
The three sauces are deliberately different in temperament. Roasted tomatoes with garlic are sweet and round, tahini with harissa is rich and hot, and garlic yoghurt is sharp and cold. Each works on its own over the vegetables or the rice. They do not work on top of one another.
Ingredients
- 200 g rice (1 cup) — basmati or whichever type you prefer
- 300 ml water, for cooking the rice
- 1 pinch of salt, for the rice
- 4 tbsp warm water
- 2 heads of garlic, tops sliced off
- 1 tbsp coarse salt, for drawing water from the aubergines
- ½ tsp salt, for the tomato sauce
- 1 pinch of salt, for the yoghurt
- 2 medium aubergines, cut into 1.5 cm rounds or strips
- 2 medium courgettes, cut into 1.5 cm rounds or strips
- 1 tsp olive oil, for the garlic
- 4 tbsp olive oil, for coating the vegetables
- 1 tbsp olive oil, for the yoghurt
- 4 medium tomatoes
- 100 g tahini
- 3 tbsp harissa
- 400 g thick yoghurt — **original:** Greek yoghurt / **plant-based:** 400 g soya yoghurt
- 1 bunch of parsley, chopped
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- ½ lemon, juiced
- 2 tsp za'atar — optional
Method
1. Soak the rice (30 min)
This is really the first step, even though the rice is cooked last.
Rinse the rice in two or three changes of water, rubbing the grains gently between your fingers, until the water runs almost clear. Cover with lukewarm water and leave to soak for 30 minutes. This keeps the grains separate and stops them breaking as they cook.
2. Salt the aubergines (30 min, alongside)
Cut the aubergines into 1.5 cm rounds or strips. Sprinkle coarse salt on both sides and leave them in a colander to drain for 30 minutes.
Wipe them thoroughly with kitchen paper, pressing gently. The moisture you draw out now is the difference between aubergines that brown and aubergines that steam in their own liquid.
3. Heat the grill and prepare the garlic
Turn the oven grill on to its highest setting and let it heat up properly.
Set the shelf on the first or second position down from the top, close to the element, and use a deep-ish roasting tin rather than a flat baking sheet. It sounds like a contradiction, but the depth of the tin is what drops the vegetables a few centimetres and holds them at the right distance: close enough to brown, far enough to soften through before they burn.
Slice the top off each head of garlic so the cloves are exposed in cross-section. Drizzle with a little oil and wrap tightly in foil.
4. Grill everything (30 min)
Coat the courgettes and aubergines well with olive oil on both sides. Lay them in the lined roasting tin in a single layer, without overlapping. Add the whole tomatoes and the foil-wrapped garlic alongside.
Grill for 10-15 minutes on each side, until the vegetables take on browned, lightly charred patches and are soft in the middle. Keep an eye on them — on the highest setting the difference between browned and burnt is a minute or two, and it varies a lot from oven to oven.
The tomatoes and garlic stay in for the whole time, 30 minutes in total, and come out with the vegetables. The tomato skins will split and blacken in places — exactly what you want, it's where the smoky flavour in the sauce comes from.
Griddle pan alternative: heat a griddle pan until it just begins to smoke. Lay down the oiled vegetables and leave them for 3-4 minutes on each side without moving them, so they take the char lines. You can't roast the tomatoes or garlic at the same time this way.
5. First sauce — roasted tomato and garlic
Peel the skins off the roasted tomatoes and remove the cores. Chop them finely.
Squeeze the cloves from one head of roasted garlic straight over the tomatoes — they come out as a paste. Add ½ tsp of salt and stir. Taste and adjust.
6. Second sauce — tahini and harissa
While the vegetables roast, put the tahini in a bowl and pour over 3-4 tbsp of warm water, whisking as you go. It will seize and look split at first — keep going, it loosens and turns creamy.
Add 2 tbsp of harissa, stir, taste, and add another if you want more heat.
7. Third sauce — the yoghurt bed
Beat the yoghurt with garlic, a tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt.
You have two options for the garlic: fresh, one or two crushed cloves, for a sharp bite; or roasted, squeezed from the second head, for something sweet and mellow. With roasted garlic, the yoghurt becomes almost a sauce in its own right.
8. Cook the rice (15 min)
Drain the soaked rice. Put it in a pan with a pinch of salt and water at a ratio of 1 : 1¼ for drier rice, or 1 : 1½ for a softer result — so 250-300 ml water per cup of rice. This ratio works for most types of rice after soaking.
Bring to the boil. From the moment it starts bubbling, turn the heat down low, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Take it off the heat and leave it covered for another 5 minutes without lifting the lid.
9. Fold the herbs through the rice
Add the chopped parsley, spring onion and the juice of ½ lemon to the rice. Fold it through gently, with a fork, just enough to distribute — you want whole grains, not mush.
10. Serve
Spread the garlic yoghurt across the base of the plate. Lay the roasted vegetables on top and scatter over the za'atar. The rice goes alongside, not underneath.
Serve the tomato and tahini sauces on the side, to be spooned over either the vegetables or the rice. Ideally not one on top of the other.
Notes and tips
Why salt the aubergines
Salt draws water out of aubergines by osmosis. Drained and wiped, they brown; left as they are, they steam in their own liquid and stay soft and pale. Thirty minutes is enough, and wiping them dry with kitchen paper matters as much as the salting itself.
Grill or griddle pan
The griddle gives you neat char lines and is quicker, but it keeps you standing over it and you can only fit two or three pieces at a time.
The oven grill on full does something different: it browns unevenly, in patches, closer to a real barbecue. And — most importantly — it lets you cook the tomatoes and garlic at the same time, which means half the recipe cooks itself. It does need watching, though: on the highest setting there's no margin for error.
The water ratio for rice
Soaked rice has already taken on water, so it needs less in the pan than the packet suggests. 1:1¼ gives separate, drier grains, which is what you want for folding herbs through. 1:1½ gives a softer rice, better if you're eating it with plenty of sauce.
Keep the sauces apart
The roasted tomato and the tahini-harissa both work beautifully with the vegetables, but together they cancel each other out: the acidity of the tomatoes cuts the richness of the tahini and what's left tastes flat. Pick one per mouthful.
Za'atar
Not essential, but it changes the plate. The mix of thyme, sesame and sumac brings a tart, herbal note that ties the yoghurt to the roasted vegetables. Scatter it at the end — it isn't cooked.