Eggplant Two Ways

A few weeks ago, I got 2 beautiful eggplant in my share.  My initial plan was to make Eggplant Parmesan, but a person who shall go unnamed accidentally took my large glass baking dish and all I had around the apartment to replace it was a glass pie dish.  The dish was too small to fit both eggplants so I just used one and made an Eggplant Pizza with the second one.

Baked Eggplant Parmesan

So I don't have any one recipe that I used for this dish, just a few that I scanned to see how to best prepare the eggplant. It was a pretty simple dish to put together and kind of intuitive, EXCEPT for one important part.

The first step is to slice the eggplant.  I cut my slices about a half inch in thickness.  I didn't want them too thin that you couldn't really taste it, but I wanted it thin enough that it would bake through evenly. 

Here's the crazy part-you're supposed to salt the sliced eggplant, put the slices in a colander and let them sweat for an hour.  Who knew you were supposed to do THAT!?  I had no idea what the point of salting and sweating the eggplant was so I took to Google to find out why it's important.  Little did I know what a divisive issue it was!  There is a "sweat" camp and a "no sweat" camp in the culinary world and evidently this fight can get heated.  I went ahead and did it because, why not?  The theory is that by salting the eggplant it draws out some of the moisture in the eggplant, which makes the breading less soggy AND takes out the bitterness of the vegetable.  Had I know this was such a big deal, I would have sweated half and not sweated the other and see if it made a difference.  Do any of you have a preference?  After sweating the eggplant slices, you wipe the excess moisture off with a paper towel.  Recipes get pretty standard from here one out.

I had two dishes, one with beaten egg and the other with a mix of 1 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs and 1/4 cup parmesan cheese mixed together.  You dredge the slices in the egg and then cover with bread crumbs and place on a baking sheet.  Bake both sides of the breaded slices for 5 minutes at 350 degrees.

I took the easy route and used marinara sauce from a jar (Paul Newman brand) and spread a layer of the sauce in the bottom of the glass pie dish.  Then, I layered the baked eggplant slices on top of the sauce.  I covered them with a little more sauce and a whoooooole lot of shredded mozzarella cheese (too much to be truthful).  I popped the whole shebang into the oven and baked for about
25 minutes.

As I mentioned, I put too much cheese on mine, but the meal was really delicious and I quite enjoyed it.

     

Eggplant Pizza

My decision to make eggplant pizza as my second dish was largely inspired by the fact that I had leftover tomato sauce!  Again, I didn't use any one particular recipe, but since I had no idea how to prepare the eggplant so I used this as a guideline!

The recipe calls for brushing both sides of the eggplant with olive oil and adding a little salt and placing the slices on a baking sheet covered in tinfoil.  It then calls for broiling the eggplant for 2-3 minutes on each side.  I have never in my life broiled anything.  It was evident by how poorly I broiled the eggplant. I kind of burned them.  Oops.

I have never made a pizza before, but I did buy a pizza stone so it was fun to take it for a whirl!  I bought pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store (cheater, I know), coated it in a tiny bit of flour and tried my best to turn it into a pizza shaped circle.  This did not go well.  It looked good on first glance, but when it cooked it puffed up like crazy!  Anyway, once I thought I had the dough all taken care of, I spread the remaining marinara sauce on the center of the dough and topped it with shredded mozzarella.

I placed the eggplant on top of the mozzarella and popped it in the oven (on top of the pizza stone of course) and cooked it for about 15 minutes at 500 degrees (seriously...500 degrees).

I cooked the pizza for too long.  Big surprise, right?

So it sounds from my description like this entire experience was a terrible disaster, but it actually wasn't!  Sure the eggplant was a little overcooked, the crust was on the thick side and the cheese was a little overly toasted, but it still actually TASTED pretty darn good.  That, I guess, is all that really matters at the end of the day.  I'm looking forward to trying another pizza soon so I can try to perfect my technique!!!

          

Roast ALL the Vegetables!

As I mentioned in my Wednesday post, I had made a great meal while I was house sitting last week that never made its way online.  I wanted to get that up here quickly this week so I could move on to my Eggplant Two Ways post in the next few days!

No real recipes to link to here.  I just kind of threw this meal together (so advanced, right!?).  I had sooooo many veggies at this point I just needed to find a way to cook them all up. I decided to make a simple  panko breaded pork chop and a whole bunch of roasted veggies.

I cut up carrots, patty pan squash, green and purple peppers, potatoes, and small heirloom tomatoes.  I tossed them all in some olive oil with some salt, pepper and parmesan cheese,  wrapped it all up in some aluminum foil, put it in a casserole dish and roasted them in the oven.  I had never roasted tomatoes like this before so I wasn't sure how it was going to come out.

I was also a little concerned with timing since I knew the potatoes would take a lot longer to cook then something thinner and less tough like the peppers.

By the time they were done everything looked, smelled and tasted AWESOME.  Most of the tomatoes had exploded, but that kind of worked in its favor.  The juice from the tomatoes added a lot of moisture and flavor to the rest of the veggies.  Yum!

Although the veggies are obviously the focal point of this blog, I would be remiss if I didn't mention how I cooked the pork chops.  Super simple.  First, I put some salt and cracked pepper on each side of the pork chop.  Then I got two bowls together, one with beaten egg and another with panko crumbs and some parmesan cheese mixed together.  I soaked the pork chop in the egg wash and then covered it with the panko/cheese mixture.  The chops went into a glass baking dish and cooked them at 450 degrees for about 25 minutes.

That was it!  The whole meal was really simple and tasty.  A good go-to meal when you need to use up a lot of veggies.

          

Week 14 - A Small Share This Week

Hi friends!
Ok, so after what feels like forever, I am back to normal!  The ex has moved out, I am home from house sitting and I can get back into my cooking routine.  One small hiccup is that with the breakup, I lost custody of quite a few kitchen accessories.  It'll take awhile to replace everything, but I've already got a new, wooden cutting board...baby steps, right?

It turns out I made another meal while I was house sitting that never made its way into the blog - oops!  I'll be posting that as well as two eggplant-based meals in the coming days so please stay tuned.  One big thing I should let you know, is that I've been using a lot of my items on boring, non-post worthy stuff (using the tomatoes in salads and eating peppers with hummus for lunch).  Just because I haven't documented everything here doesn't mean I haven't been enjoying the veggie goodness!!!

The one downside of being home is that my kitchen doesn't get nearly the same amount of amazing natural sunlight as the place I was house sitting so my photos are back to looking a little darker then they were the past few weeks.

This week my share included:

• Bok Choi
• Broccoli
• Corn on the Cob
• Leeks
• Oregano
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes

As always, I am over the moon excited about all the tomatoes and corn on the cob.  The little baby heirloom tomatoes are so yummy to just eat like candy and make a great little snack.  The corn is so great and fresh and I love nothing more than cooking it up simply and chowing down!  Why mess with perfection, right!?

All season long I've had trouble with bok choi.  The first batch I got went bad before I could use it and the second, I gave to my brother.  I am determined to actually make something with it this time!  I think it might be time to make a great stir fry, especially since I have broccoli and peppers from my share to play with too.

Now onto my Veggie Person of the Week!  If you're reading from Boston you know that after a gorgeous few fall days the temperatures skyrocketed and hit a whopping 97 degrees.  I think it's safe to say, this was probably the last really summery day we'll have until next season so I was inspired to channel the summer one last time and created Sally Sweet Pepper!

I realized after I created the Vine and Instagram that the underside of the pepper is red (I put the red side down so her red sunglasses would really pop), but if you look at her from the side it looks like she has a sunburn!

Ha! 

           

 

Weeks 12 + 13

Hi friends!  Sorry I've been missing in action lately.  I have been laptopless while I've been house sitting so I've neglected my Wednesday posts for week 11 & 12.  Before things get too backed up, I wanted to remedy the situation and introduce you to the newest additions to the Veggie People family.

Week 12 - Wednesday, August 28

The week 12 share was a little on the sparse side, but what was in the share was pretty great.  I don't really eat hot peppers, but I'm going to try to find a way to put them to good use.  I should also note that I put everything away in the refrigerator before I realized I never took a picture and had to take everything back out for the photo.  As a result, I forgot to take out a beautiful pint of orange cherry tomatoes.  So good.

The Week 12 share included:

• Bell Peppers
• Jalapeno Peppers 
• Purple Beauty Peppers
• Summer Squash
• Sweet Corn 
• Thai Basil
• Tomatoes

Week 13 - Wednesday, September 4

We've officially hit my favorite part to the share year!  We were almost there last week, but with the addition of potatoes there is no doubt!

The Week 13 share included:

• Eggplant
• Lettuce
• Mizuna
• Red Potatoes
• Sweet Corn
• Swiss Chard
• Thai Green Eggplant
• Tomatoes

I had no idea what Thai Green Eggplants were until I got this share yesterday, but they're adorable.  I guess they are most commonly used in green curry.  Sadly, as adventurous as I've tried to be during the course of this blog, I don't really plan on making curry.  I'll be putting out some feelers to my foodie friends to see if anyone wants them.  According to what I've ready they're generally the size of a golf ball, but these we larger than that and I assume someone who knows what to do with them would be thrilled to have them.

Veggie People of the Week(s)

On Week 12, I got my first ears of corn for the season - one of my absolute favorite share items.  Nothing spells fall quite like farm fresh corn on the cob, which inspired me to create Calvin Corncob!

 

Of course for week 13 I couldn't help but use my new, weird veggie to create Tina and Ted Thai Eggplant.  They're supposed to be bride and groom, but a coworker thought she was a nun so I guess it wasn't my most well executed veggie creation of all time.  They're cute nonetheless, though.

 

             

Monster Vegetables

Hi Friends,
I know it LOOKS like I haven't been up to much in the kitchen lately, but it's really just that I've been a little lazy in actually writing up my posts.  Also, I am currently house sitting so I spent a few days literally scattered.  I decided to catch up with a post today covering my experiment with Fried Green Tomatoes and Vegetable Lasagna.  I decided on both of these recipes because I had gotten unusually large vegetables over the past two weeks.  Each veggie (tomato and zucchini) was too big to use as a garnish or a side and required a meal based entirely around them.  So...off we go!

Fried Green Tomatoes

Let's start with a caveat.  I used an enormous tomato from my share last week to try in this recipe.  It looked like a regular heirloom tomato, but it was green and yellow and red so I have no idea if it was technically a green tomato (non-ripened tomato) or something altogether different.  All I knew was that it was HUGE (as you can see from the photo to the left) and firm and that I could slice it into thick pieces for frying.

The recipe linked above calls for using a deep fryer, which I don't have so I went old skool and simply fried them in a pan.  I also messed up the tremendously simple directions and added the cayenne pepper and paprika to the flour mixture and not the panko mixture.  Oops.

I also didn't bother to make the buttermilk dipping sauce because I was lazy and didn't feel like it.  I just ate them on their lonesome.

The tomato itself was very tasty and the seasoning was nice, but uhg...too much oil.  They ended up too greasy for my tastes and I think if I were to try them again I'd give baking them a shot.  I have a feeling the crunchiness of the panko would be better suited to baking instead of frying.  I also probably shouldn't have been lazy and made the damn dipping sauce to negate some of the oily flavor.  If you're lazy like me and don't feel like making a sauce I think these would taste great with a little bit of ranch dressing or some marinara sauce for dipping.

Vegetable Lasagna

I found this recipe looking for a way to use the giant zucchini (see last Wednesday's post) I got in my last share.  It called for 3 cups of chopped zucchini so I couldn't ask for anything more tailor made.  Also, it's low-fat, which seems like a good plan given the fried tomatoes!

I was missing a few ingredients called for in the recipe that I would have had if I was at my apartment, but because I am house sitting, decided not to purchase - the basil and the nutmeg.  I also didn't realize that the recipe called for "no-boil lasagna noodles" and purchased regular ones.  To be honest I had no idea there even was such a thing as no-boil noodles.  How does that even work?  Are they frozen?  I'm completely perplexed.  After all, it only takes 20 minutes to boil some water and cook noodles, what's the big deal?

I started cooking this meal around 6pm and didn't end up eating until after 9pm!  The recipe calls for sauteing the veggies for about 8 minutes.  I am guessing I just didn't chop mine small enough because getting them soft enough to include in the lasagna took 3x as long.


I wasn't entirely trusting of the white sauce either - flour and milk?  Trust it!  Once you add the cottage and parmesan cheese and mix it all up, it thickens up nicely and has great flavor.

At the end of the day the final product was WELL worth the wait.  It was really delicious.  The only thing I would change for next time - MAKE MORE VEGGIES!  I felt like the veggie layers were a little skimpy and could have used more. I would also consider adding some additional vegetables, like eggplant and summer squash.  You can only really improve on this recipe since it's darn delicious just as it is.

I think I'm going to need to start inviting people over when I cook now, since an entire lasagna for one person is really a little over the top. Leftovers for everyone!

I get my newest share today, and although I usually update my blog on Wednesday to reflect that, since I don't have my laptop while I'm house sitting I won't be able to post it until Thursday morning.

Thanks for tuning in, friends and I'll be seeing you soon!

           

How about some chocolate with those veggies?

As was evidenced by my earlier carrot cake post, sometimes I like a little dessert with my vegetables.  I had two smaller zucchinis from my share two weeks ago that I really wanted to use before they went bad and I am a huge fan of zucchini bread, so I figured that would be a good way to use them.  After a quick internet recipe search I realized a CHOCOLATE zucchini bread could be nothing less than perfect.



The recipe I used is quick and simple.  It says it's enough batter for 2, 8x4" loaves, but I just made one huge loaf instead because I only have one pan and didn't want to keep my oven on for 2 hours.  I didn't even taste the final product before bringing it in to the office on Thursday, but my colleagues gave it rave reviews. 


Side Note: I totally read the ingredients list too quickly and put in 1 tsp of baking powder instead of only 1/4 of a tsp.  I expected disastrous results and was relived when it baked properly and was still tasty.

I wonder how many of these loaves I could make with the insanely huge zucchini that came in my share this week!!!

Side Note 2:  I am going to be house sitting for the next two weeks so I'm not sure what my cooking abilities are going to be like.  I have some plans for meals I want to make, just not sure what my new temporary situation will be like.  Keep visiting to see!