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This recipe has a few surprises. My requirements for dinner included using an eggplant, a red pepper, a stalk of broccoli, and some leftover tofu. This turned out to be really fun and easy, despite the copious amounts of dishes it seemed to leave me with. I’m sure I could have made it in a more organized fashion had I not been making it up as I went along.
The sauce you see is not tomato, it’s simply a single red bell pepper, pureed raw, with a pinch of salt. I need to remind myself every once in a while that it’s not necessary to cook every single vegetable I want to eat. It added a nice sweetness to balance out the salty roasted eggplant and sun-dried tomatoes in the couscous. Yup! That’s couscous in there, too!
Can you guess what the green bit on the top is? Pureed, steamed broccoli! This was such a fun way to eat broccoli, I want to buy more immediately so I can blend it up again and use it in odd places. Forgive my enthusiasm, but there’s something about this light, bright green broccoli fluff that makes be a bit giddy.
Eggplant Napoleon
Serves four
Roasted Eggplant
1 Eggplant, sliced into 3/8″ thick rounds
1/2 Cup Olive oil (I know! It’s a lot! Use less if you want!)
1 tsp Salt
Sun-dried Tomato Couscous
1/2 cup Couscous (french – the very tiny kind thats roughly shaped)
1/4 Cup Sun-Dried Tomatoes, sliced in strips
1 Cup Water, boiling
Sauce
1 Red Bell Pepper, seeded and veined
1 pinch to 1/4 tsp salt
Broccoli Fluff
2 Cups Broccoli, rough chopped, steamed
Pepper to taste
1/2 Recipe Tofu Ricotta
1/2 Cup Toasted Pine Nuts
Preheat oven to 425º F.
Rub eggplant slices in salt and oil, place in one layer on a cookie sheet, and bake for 20 minutes. Flip, bake for 10 more minutes, remove from oven.
Meanwhile, place couscous and tomatoes in a small pot with a dribble of vegetable oil. Toast over medium heat until fragrant, add boiling water, cover, reduce heat to low. After 10 minutes, turn off heat. Puree your pepper in a food processor until very smooth. Add salt to taste, set aside. Steam broccoli, puree, add pepper to taste, set aside. Toast pine nuts in a dry skillet. Mix together tofu ricotta, heat in mircowave until hot, set aside.
To assemble
Place a bit of the pepper sauce in the middle of the plate. Add a slice of eggplant on top of that. Add a layer of tofu ricotta and a layer of broccoli fluff. Add another slice of eggplant. Add couscous and broccoli. Add the last slice of eggplant and top with tofu and broccoli. Garnish with toasted pine nuts.
April 12th, 2007
This is another test recipe for the Post Punk Kitchen’s forthcoming cookbook, Veganomicon. Her first book, Vegan with a Vengeance, is my all-time favorite cookbook. I can tell you honestly that this one will be every bit as useful, dependable, and amazing as the first. I swear they’re not paying me to promote the books. They’re just all so great!
This recipe, man, I can’t even tell you how much I liked it. It’s basically breaded, fried eggplant, stuffed with tastiness and tofu ricotta, then smothered with a delicious marinara sauce. I’d buy the cookbook for this recipe alone.
I know there are a lot of people who dislike eggplant, but I wonder how many of them have tried it fried or baked with olive oil. Eggplant really takse on a different character when cooked this way – it’s really quite divine. It’s buttery, soft, almost creamy, but it does take a lot of oil to get it that way. I think it’s worth it.
I’ve been making some other test recipes that I haven’t told you about yet. Here is a dessert and a quick bread:
Tea Poached Pears
Whole Wheat Soda Bread with Millet and Currants
February 18th, 2007
The more I learn about cooking, the more I discover how everyone has the “right” way to do something, from cooking pasta (oil in the water? do you rinse it after draining?) to prepping eggplants (peel them? salt and drain them?). Some of the techniques are actually useful, and some are just kitchen voodoo that doesn’t improve anything, but doesn’t hurt either (e.g. cold water boils faster. In what universe is that true?!).
It doesn’t surprise me, then, that everyone has their own opinion on how to clean a mushroom. Do you wash them? Soak them? Brush them or pat them or blow on them? I was always told to never soak or rinse fresh mushrooms, since they’ll suck up the water like little sponges and you’ll be left with soggy fungus. Soggy fungus? That phrase was enough to prevent me from ever letting a drop of water to touch my mushrooms
With washing out of the question, I had a hard time deciding how to clean them. I’ve tried wiping them with cloths, rubbing them with damp paper towels, and I even once bought a mushroom brush to flick away the dirt. Brushing seems to be more effective than wiping, but it’s all a pain in the rear.
One day I was in my sister’s kitchen and she did something I had never seen before.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m peeling mushrooms.”
“You’re… what?”
“I’m peeling mushrooms. I always peel them.”
I had never heard of peeling mushrooms! She showed me how to do it, and not only was it easy, but it also removed ever bit of dirt-ridden flesh from each and every one. It’s still a little bit time consuming, but it really gets them clean Here’s how:
First you’ll need to remove the stem from your mushroom. This is my favorite part; it has the same appeal as popping bubble wrap. Simply press on one side of the stem with your thumb. You might need to press again on the opposite side to get a clean break.
This is a picture of a mushroom that’s already half-way peeled. On the right, you can see the part of the peel that hasn’t yet been removed. It almost looks like the hem of a skirt. Simply grasp the edge of the skirt and pull to peel your mushroom, it will come off in strips.
Here’s what it looks like from the top. The strip that comes off is very thin, thinner than it looks like it is in this picture. This also works on larger mushrooms like portobellos.
So, is peeling mushrooms worth it? Probably not. Doing some research for this post, I stumbled upon more than one person insisting that it’s okay to wash mushrooms! Gasp! This page says:
According to the USDA Nutrient Database, mushrooms are already 92.5% water by weight, so even if they absorbed 1/3 of their weight more, they would still be less than 95% water. In his book “The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore”, Harold McGee describes an experiment in which he soaked 252 grams of mushrooms for 5 minutes, blotted the moisture of the surface and re-weighed them. In total, they had soaked up only 6 grams of water. Their moisture content had increased by only 1/5 of 1%!
This probably depends on how dry the mushrooms were before they were soaked. I imagine a fresh mushroom has a higher water content than one that has been cut, packaged and shipped across the country to sit in a refrigerated case for a few days before you or I purchase it. Still, there is a certain amount of logic to this. After all, don’t mushrooms grow outside? In the rain? This site says that it’s not only okay to soak them, but some varieties actually taste better after a brief salt water bath before cooking.
My new mushroom mantra is this: it’s okay to wash them. Or peel them. Or brush them. Or simply wish them clean. They’re your mushrooms, and I’m sure dinner will come out just fine no matter what technique you choose. Personally, I think I’ll be peeling when I have the time (because it’s kind of fun), but a short dip in bowl of water is most definitely acceptable. Thank god.
February 12th, 2007
I promise you, this is the last time I’ll subject you to risotto for a while. Baked risotto is just such a revelation. I had to try it again with a tomato base. I also had an eggplant and some mushrooms to use, and didn’t feel like being all that creative. Stewart and I were hungry and it wasn’t time for me to start playing around in the kitchen without a plan. Risotto? In a half hour? Done.
January 29th, 2007
Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Panino
Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Panino
Serves 2
1 Loaf French Bread
1 Pint Sweet Cherry Tomatoes
1 Medium Eggplant
1 Bunch Fresh Basil, chiffonade
2 Slices Tofutti Cheese (optional)
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Preheat oven to 350º.
Slice the tomatoes in half and place them cut-side up in a baking dish. Sprinkle with a generous pinch of salt and 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil. Roast for 70-80 minutes.
Once the tomatoes are in, prepare the eggplant. Slice the ends off the eggplant and peel off the skin with a vegetable peeler. Slice widthwise into quarter inch thick circles and place on a baking sheet in one layer. Sprinkle with a generous pinch of salt. Drizzle about 1/2 cup of olive oil (or more. for serious) over the slices. Bake in the oven for 35-45 minutes depending on how thick your slices are. The eggplant should be soft and browned.
Let the eggplant and tomatoes cool. Slice the loaf of bread into two equal portions. Slice each portion in half lengthwise without cutting all the way through. Rub the bread with olive oil and add the fillings:
Place sandwiches, open faced, into a 400º oven for 5 minutes, until bread is crispy and “cheese” is melted. When they come out of the oven, fold the top over and press down – the olive oil will soak into the bread and form a natural “dressing” for the sandwich.
Serve warm.
January 5th, 2007
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