Scottish Cow

Roasted Eggplant Dip

I hesitate (just a little bit) to call this Baba Ghanoush because I’m not positive what authentic Baba is – and I’m sure there is plenty of discussion about that already – so Roasted Eggplant Dip seemed safe and plenty descriptive.

Two things:

1) If you love eggplant, you’ll love this

2) If you don’t like eggplant, give this a try.  It’s a little different from your everyday eggplant.

(How’s that for equivocation?)

It’s not just me hedging my bets though, as the flavor is certainly eggplant, but the texture of this is so light and silky – and I think it’s the texture that gets to most aubergineophobics (yeah, not a real word, I checked).  But I do wish that we called them aubergine here in the US and not eggplants – it’s a beautiful word.

Onto the dip:

Step 1:  In your oven, or in a heavy pan on the stove, or best yet, in the grill, cook the eggplants fairly slowly until the skin is charred and they basically collapse into a pile of mush.  I did 2 eggplants, as we had a bunch coming in from the garden, but 1 would be fine, just less dip (duh).  I put the grill on medium low, and just left them in there, turning every 10 minutes or so until they were done.* 

Step 2:  Once off the heat, slice the skin open and let cool for a bit.  It should be completely soft inside.  When you can handle them, scrape all the eggplant guts out into the food processor. 

Step 3:  Add some yogurt – you can add as much or as little as you want.  Less yogurt and the dip will be more eggplanty.  I used the Fage (Greek style – thick, flavorful, wonderful, worth every penny) yogurt.  You can get a similar consistency with regular yogurt by leaving it in a strainer for a little while.  Add a clove of garlic, minced, and pinches of salt and pepper.  Squeeze half a lemon in.

Step 4:  Run the processor while drizzling in some olive oil – you don’t need a lot.  Stop taste and add more of anything.  Sorry, you can’t subtract.

I went easy on the garlic (against every single bone in my body) and left out the fresh herbs (again, at this point of the summer, also feat of willpower) – this was intentional, as I guess I wanted something pretty mellow and smooth, and not too rich - I’ve had some very, very creamy Baba Ghanoush and was shooting for something different.

That’s it – eggplant, yogurt, garlic, lemon, s/p and oil.

I actually did stir some minced marjoram (or it might have been oregano) into the leftovers on day 2, and that was really good as well.

With eggplants ripe and ready to eat, this is the way to go.  It works well with the ones that are getting a little tired and wrinkly too, since they are being obliterated anyway.

What to do with it?

• Veggie Dip
• Eat as pictured, spread on toasted pitas, topped with tomatoes, some herbs and oil
• Sandwich/wrap filling or spread
• Dessert topping (and floor wax, of course)

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* This post was delayed a bit, as during my first attempt I put the eggplants on the grill and left them there.  For almost 3 hours.  When I remembered, at midnight, I ran out to discover they had turned it to crispy black shells, completely hollow, all of the flesh long gone.  I touched one and poof, like that, it was gone…turned to dust.  Don’t do that to your eggplants, please. :)

August Vegetable Pie

Alternative titles considered, but ultimately rejected, for this post:

1)  Roasted Vegetable Tart

2)  Pile of Healthy Stuff, Surrounded by Cheese and Butter-Ridden Crust

3) The Pie That Shall Not Be Named

We’re left with “August Vegetable Pie,” which in all honesty doesn’t really sound so hot, but here were are.  It’s August after all, and we’ve finally got some fantastic eggplant and tomatoes, and although the zucchini is heading on its way out, our kitchen table was overwhelmed with a pile of those three (lazy centerpiece?) - so that’s what went into the pie.

I’m not quite sure whether to call this a pie or a tart, but I suppose it doesn’t matter so much.  It requires a single batch of your standard pie/tart dough.  Any all-purpose and especially any baking cookbook will undoubtedly have a recipe for it, if you don’t have a favorite already. If you’re feeling fancy, Google (or even better, use Food Blog Search) for “Pate Brisee.”  Lazy?  Check out one of these recipes.  I usually use something similar, all butter, with an egg, nice and flaky and easy.

The inspiration for this came from a tart my mom used to make that consisted of a pie crust, a layer of mustard, tomatoes, basil and cheese.  That just wasn’t going to plow through our pile of veggies though.

The zucchini and eggplant got sliced, tossed with oil/salt/pepper, and roasted in the oven (at 350) on a rack on a cookie sheet until they were soft and starting to brown.  The tomatoes got the same treatment, but after they had been lightly salted and pressed in paper towels.  A lot of work, yes, but have you had a vegetable tart that was overrun with liquid before?   Sogged out crust and watery filling?  Yeah, me too.  Those suck.

So all the vegetables get cooked ahead and layered into the pie crust.  As extra water-insurance, I tried baking the crust for about 10-15 minutes before putting the veggies in, with a layer of grated parmesan sprinked in.  I would have pre baked it anyway, but the cheese seemed like a good idea as well.  It didn’t work out so well – normally when blind (pre) baking the shell, we’d put some foil in it, and fill it with old beans to keep the crust in place.  Well, I couldn’t do that with the cheese in there, and just to prove a point, the crust completely collapsed.  Not sure how I’d approach it next time, but pulling it out a little early, smushing the dough back up the walls and letting it finish the pre-bake worked out all right.

After it’s baked, the veggies get layered in.  I didn’t want to clobber it with garlic, which is my usual M.O., but we had some pesto left over, so a thin layer of that ended up in the middle, and it worked well.

First, the layer by layer photos and then an outline of the overall plan..  I do believe just about any vegetable would be great, so go for it.

 

- Make pie crust, refrigerate at least 1 hour, maybe overnight (let warm up for 15 minutes if you do that)

- Roll out crust, get into pie dish and bake with or without cheese and/or weights (you’re on your own here) for 10-15 minutes until it starts to firm up and get a little golden

- While that’s baking, slice and prep veggies.

- While pie crust is cooling, roast veggies.

- Layer everything in.  This one was as follows:

1) Parmesan (baked in)
2) Eggplant
3) Pesto
4) Zucchini, sprinkled with a little more parm
5) Tomato, little more parm
6) Big pile of shredded basil
7) Melting cheese – fontina.

Back into the oven until is bubbly and you can no longer withstand the urge to burn your tongue on the cheesy, stewy tomatoes.

Molly (quickly becoming master of the well timed one liner) decides to make a statement between bites of this very meal: 

“I’m done with veggies.”  She says, with a little nod of her head to confirm it. 

“Just candy from now on.” 

And continues eating her vegetable candy pie.

Molly and the Earth

The happiness and excitement that Molly exudes when she’s running through the grass to get to the garden is something else.  Trying as carefully as her little hands can manage to cut some lettuce leaves with the purposefully dull pre-school scissors.  Filling the basket, flipping the still-growing yellow and red stemmed chard leaves back and forth, it’s obvious she’s wondering when we get to pick some more.  They are crowding each other out, and we need to make some space where we carelessly planted the seeds too close together, weeks ago, together.  The pride in painting her own little terra cotta pots with pictures of tomatoes and peppers and then getting a seedling into each one, with only a few casualties.  The tears shed over her worm collections, the first of which had its population devastated in what’s come to be known as “The Flood” – the night their screened-in “house” was left outside, presumably for some fresh air, only to encounter a downpour.  There was no ark.

 

It’s gotten to the point where we can dispatch her out to the herb garden with a request for a few cilantro sprigs or some mint, and she’ll usually return with what was requested, usually without dirty roots hanging on, but not always.

She redistributes toads around the yard to the gardens, thinking they’ll be more comfortable there, like a force of nature.  She’s the fifth wind.

It makes me smile when she asks a question that I don’t know the answer to.  “How many cabbages will be on that plant?  Where do the eggplants come out of?”  There’s something to be said for a 31 year-old learning the same things at the same time as his almost 5 year-old.

She’s obviously going to be a better gardener than me some day.  More than that, the building, the digging, the dirt under your fingernails, seeds breaking from the soil – I feel like we’re starting a family tradition – and a wonderful one at that.

She’s learning to work, to have a bit of self reliance in a world that seems to encourage otherwise at times.  She’s learning how good and simple food can be and how annoying it is gritting on dirt between your teeth when you try to eat something straight from the ground.  She’s getting slightly less afraid of things that creep and crawl.  Her pride is a sign, I think, of her feelings for her surroundings.  She may not know it, and certainly has trouble expressing it sometimes, but she cares.  Not just about her family, and her toys, and getting a nice plate of cheese & crackers to snack on in the afternoon.  She cares about this little skewed rectangle of ours, 96 feet wide, and 300 feet from the curb to the weedy fence all the way at the back that we alone are responsible for. 

Good for her. 

So, what to do with all the vegetables…A few ideas, you know, aside from just eating them straight:

1) Better salad dressing – try something different.  One of our favorites is a miso based dressing that was born to be customized.  The dressing gets its body from oil and miso (usually just white) – add some sweet, some sour and herbs and you’re all set.  You really need a blender to get it emulsified and a food processor is probably too big, unless you’re doing a huge batch.

In a blender – a couple spoons of miso, some chopped up chives, scallions or a little minced onion, a spoon of honey or sugar, a little bit of vinegar/lemon juice, a handful of fresh herbs (nothing too strong, hold the rosemary), and give it a blend.  If it’s really thick, add a little water.  While the blender is running, slowly pour in some oil.  I like grapeseed or canola for this (something plain).  The dressing will thicken up as you go.  Stop, taste, fix.  You can add more water if you want it thinner.

It would be great on steamed/grilled veggies as well as the basic green salad.

The picture isn’t fantastic, but then again, it’s just a bowl of dressing.

2) Wrap it – I’ve said it before, wraps are great for kids.  They are excellent for using up leftovers, and hiding ingredients that might be cause for strife (kale, I’m looking in your direction.)  If you don’t have any ingredients to hide, you can set up a big pile of stuff like this, and everyone can build their own (the fruit wasn’t going in.) 

3) Eggs:

Again nothing new, but a little different.  We had some left over spaghetti with pesto.  It ended up getting cooked into a frittata with zucchini, shredded chard leaves and a whole bunch of herbs.  Hard to go wrong with that.

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Lemon on Pizza, Endless Rain and the Coriander Snail

 

Here’s the deal – I have a bunch of stuff to say about vegetables.  Two posts worth probably, this being the first.  There will be lots of pictures I’ve been saving up.  There’ll be me babbling about the garden and about the CSA and about summer things in general.  There will be complaints about weather and some overflowing pride in Molly.  There will be some ideas for recipes as well, but you’ve got to sift through the above to get to them.  I’m not trying to alienate all the carnivores out there, but it’s that time of year.  Here we go…

That first picture is a zucchini and roasted tomato pizza.  First, everyone who knows anyone has zucchini right now.  It’s unavoidable.  We’ve been eating alot of it, but this is the first time I’ve had it on pizza.  I ran it through the recently acquired mandoline (so fun, so fast, so threatening to the livelihood of my fingers).  I salted it, tossed it up and put it a strainer for a good hour to get out as much water as possible.  Moisture + pizza = problems, and I was picturing the rest of the toppings building an ark after seeing zucchini show up.  The salt and strain helped, but the pizza was still juicy coming out of the oven, so it went on a cooking rack and I used a meat thermometer to poke it full of holes – yes, drainage holes in your pizza.  It worked.

The tomatoes were the last of last years.  Towards the end of the summer we were talking all the cherry/roma/grape tomatoes we could get, tossing them with oil and salt (and optionally garlic and herbs) and putting them in a real low oven for a few hours in the evening.  Vacuum sealed and frozen, they made for some kick-ass pizza toppings and pasta sauces all winter.

Finally the lemon.  In the middle of Mark Bittman’s 101 picnic ideas list (a list full of inspiration) was a comment to try some squeezed lemon on leftover pizza.  Needless to say, I was intrigued.  Forget the leftovers, it seemed like it would be great with the zucchini and it was nothing short of incredible.  In fact, I think it made the pizza what it was.  It brightened up the entire thing.  Just amazing.

 

Simpler zucchini:  Mandolined thinly the long way, sauteed in oil with sliced garlic, salt and pepper.  Chopped mint and basil once it was cooked.  Simple, simple, simple.

 

I had never really put 2 and 2 together between cilantro and coriander.  I mean, I knew they were from the same plant, and that coriander was the seed, but never thought about it more than that until our cilantro grew so far out of control that the seeds showed up on the top.  Neat.  So they got collected and seem to be drying out well on the windowsill.  An unexpected harvest.  A fisheye-looking self portrait above, along with some rare blue sky.  Below, I had to include the photo, as it appears that one of the coriander seeds has decided to go snail and grown some eye-stalks (click and check it out bigger – bizarre).

Here’s the herb garden from a few weeks ago.  It’s completely out of control at this point.  It seems like I throw a few herbs in just about everything we’re eating, but still can’t keep up.

What are your favorite uses for fresh herbs?

Our weather has been truly bizarre.  I always complain that we get shortchanged on the spring and fall here, but it appears that late July and August are a little lazy this year and we’re all about fall.  We’ve had more cool, rainy days that I can count.  I don’t think there’s anything in the world better for sleeping than 65 degrees and thunderstorms, but for tomatoes?  I don’t think they’re too happy.  We have an awful lot of guys that still look like this…

In fact, aside from our sun gold cherry tomatoes (awesome), we haven’t harvested a single full size tomato.  On the other hand, our lettuce is doing fantastic and hasn’t crapped out on us yet.

The carrots I was previously drooling over – I ended up making, as promised, a shredded carrot salad.  Peeled and grated several carrots.  Ate several more,(What’s up, Doc?), toasted a handful of cashews and crushed them up and added them to a carrots.  A little salt, pepper, oil (I used avocado oil) and half a lime’s worth of juice.  Finally a pinch of chopped mint.  I thought it was fantastic.  Tina thought it might be a little too minty…which I could see – so if you add mint, really just a little bit.  It was definitely best fresh, as after a night in the fridge nothing was quite as crisp, especially the nuts.

Finally, if you’re you’re the one person that found this site after Googling for “Chunky Scottish Snowball” – congratulations!  That’s the best search ever.  I hope you found what you’re looking for.

Deliciousness in the Key of Orange

A quick revelation…

I will admit that I’ve never had a nice, small carrot just hours after it was pulled from the dirt.  A supermarket carrot can’t even compare to it.  It’s not even close.  In fact, we had a bag of supermarket carrots in the fridge when these new guys arrived, and they huddled themselves in the back of the vegetable bin, glancing nervously over their shoulders.

The supermarket carrot:  Dry, tough, and a woody center.  A few days after being in the fridge – floppy.  Have you ever had a flaccid carrot?  Is there anything more disgusting?

These carrots:  Sweet, juicy and tender all the way through.  There weren’t two different textures, just a single, perfect orange crispiness.  Abby was in bed, but the 3 of us sat there, each eating our own. Molly neglected to stop and ate the stem end and all, with whatever was left up there that I hadn’t trimmed.

We’ll do something good with these, something befitting that can show them off.  A simple shredded carrot salad maybe.  Stay tuned.

Thank you carrots, thank you dirt.

Chicken Wings, Forget the Buffalo

Let’s get the Q & A out of the way…

You:  You live in Buffalo, right?

Me:  Yes.  Well, 10 minutes to the south, but close enough.

You:  And you made some chicken wings…sweet.

Me:  Yeah.

You:  But…um…those don’t look spicy.  Or buttery.  Or dripping with Franks.

Me:  Nope.

That’s all.  I’ll let you know what happens on my way to work tomorrow.  I’m guessing there’s gonna be a police blockade along with a couple greasy cooks from the Anchor Bar looking for the guy in Buffalo making chicken wings without the, uh, Buffalo.  I may be breaking some unwritten rule I don’t know about…I mean, I didn’t grow up here.

Two more things before we can talk about what’s actually in the picture above.

1)  Designers of menus at crappy chain restaurants all across the country right now are taking their bland, boring items, throwing the word “Buffalo” in front of them, and putting some hot sauce on top.  Stop it.  Very annoying.  Well, at least you aren’t celebrating our other national claims to fame – an almost good enough football team and crappy winter weather (which isn’t really that bad.)

2)  The chicken wing is a really underused item.  Why is it that you rarely see them other than on the appetizer menu in “Buffalo” form?  They are delicious (much tastier than the breast).  They are cheap (much cheaper than the breast).  They cook really quickly – much quicker than your dry, expensive chicken breast.  Not you personally.  Just someone out there, who had a dry leathery chicken breast for dinner.  We can get wings from a farmer up the road for under $2/LB, frozen in nice 1 LB packages.  Molly calls them “chicken bones” and plays the drums on her plate when she’s done.  What’s not to love?

Looking for something different to do with chicken wings wasn’t difficult to do.  You can pretty much take any kind of dry rub, sauce or glaze and work from there.  I wanted to do something with lavender, because it’s great and it goes with chicken.  Honey because I wanted something sweet, and lemon, because me and lemon, we can’t stay away from each other.  Getting married soon.

The wings went into a bath of some lemon juice, a little vinegar, salt/pepper and olive oil for about an hour before we ate.  Some flavor, some tenderness maybe (not really an issue with these guys) and an interesting study that’s been popping up lately – we knew that those yummy charred crunchy bits on grilled food (hmmm…none of those in the photo above) were delicious and also potentially a carcinogen.  There’s research now that a quick acidic bath might actually help mitigate some of that.  The phrase “unmarinated breasts” appears in that article.  Hopefully that doesn’t cause any unnecessary blushing or run-in’s with your corporate IT policies.  Either way, the marinade doesn’t hurt the wing, so make a basic vinaigrette and let the wings hang out in that.  It may end up having some benefits.

I grilled them directly over a hot charcoal fire, gas grill would be fine, so would a broiler.  As soon as the wings were basically done, but weren’t completely crispy, they got the glaze.  It was a big scoop of honey, a lemon’s worth of juice, a big handful of chopped lavender and some more s/p all whisked up together.  It tasted good just as is – the first clue that it was going to be good on the wings.  Brush it on one side of the wings, flip them, let them sit for a minute, brush and flip again.  Keep doing that – but be careful.  The honey has this deep, dark urge to burn, and it will not be stopped.  If there’s any left, you can give the wings a little coat after they come off the grill.

These won’t be the last non-Buffalo chicken wings this summer.  A perfect dinner served with a salad, and some ice cream for dessert. 

The ice cream was homemade “coffee with crunchies” (Molly’s name for Coffee Heath Bar Crunch) using the coffee ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop.  Super good.  Here’s the beans soaking in milk, cream and sugar.  What a way to go.