I've been thinking that if you prepared the egglplant - grill it with the skin on, or cook it in the oven or microwave - then you could freeze the cooked eggplant and then thaw it out as required and make a fresh batch of Baba Ganouj whenever you want.

I used to cook a whole packet of chick peas and freeze what I didn't need so that I could make quick hommous whenever I wanted. Now I tend to use the canned chickpeas because it is easy. The canned ones weren't available in the supermarkets back when I started making Middle Eastern food.

Also, I grill the eggplant to get the smoky flavour, peel off the burnt skin or scoop the flesh from the skin if it holds together well enough, then squeeze the juice out of the flesh, because my recipe book (Claudia Roden: A Book of Middle Eastern Food) says that the juice makes it bitter. Then I blend it up with the other ingredients. I like a swirl of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a very generous sprinkle of ground cumin powder over the Baba Ganouj.