thoughtful consumption

Here’s last Thursday’s supper.

You probably recognize the cherry tomatoes. To the right is some butternut squash roasted with a little butter and maple syrup. Next is zucchini tian. I broiled the zucchini slices in my toaster oven because I couldn’t find my grill pan.

I think it was easier and just as good. What’s a broiler but an upside down grill anyway?

The main dish is grits topped with half a broiled chicken breast, grilled onions, and tarragon goat cheese. I marinated a chicken breast in olive oil, basil, garlic, and tarragon and put it in the toaster to broil. Then I started sautéing some red onion slices along with some of marinade. But the chicken wouldn’t broil itself. I think it’s because I didn’t pound it like I did the last time. So the onions got a lot crunchier than I planned as we waited for the chicken to finish. But it was all still tasty with the grits and the creamy goat cheese and fresh tarragon.

Nighttime treats

Although I regained my senses about making fried peach pies, I decided I still wanted some Varsity food. So I made frosted oranges. Nothing from the CSA here – just vanilla ice cream and orange juice blended together. It’s really easy and makes a nice summer time dessert.

I’ve also made two pots of herbal tea with the hyssop and spearmint, and I take back what I said about not liking all-herbal teas. I used roughly 4 leaves and twenty flowers for each two cup pot and steeped it 10 minutes.

Italian food is yummy.

We had fun Italian food last night: fried eggplant and pasta with basil, zucchini, and pine nuts.

The fried eggplant was a great appetizer. I peeled most of the eggplant so that the batter would stick. I purged them, wiped them off, dunked them in egg wash and then in flour and bread crumbs. Then I fried them in olive oil.

We dipped them in marinara sauce (from a jar). The eggplant’s so creamy the texture is like fried mozzarella.

For the pasta course, I used a vegetable peeler to get thin strips of the zucchini. That’s when I realized I could have used the peels from the eggplant, too! But I’d already thrown them in the scraps bucket. So sad! The purple peels would have been really pretty with the zucchini.

I started with this pasta recipe but ended with this one. The Epicurious recipe instructs you to peel strips of zucchini and then purge them and use them raw. Interesting, but I wasn’t in the mood for zucchini sashimi. So I chopped up my zucchini strips and sautéed them quickly in a little of the olive oil leftover from the eggplant. I tossed in some basil towards the end, too. Then we mixed it in with the browned butter and pine nuts and topped it all with pepper, Parmesan, and more basil. It was delicious, and we were molto happy.

A detour through East Asia…

Tonight I’m going to make a chicken and lemon grass dish according to this recipe. I’ll serve it over rice and with a side of cabbage and stir-fried squash. I cut up onion and squash for this dish a few days ago, so now I really need to use it.

I’ll make extra rice for fried rice for lunch tomorrow. I’m not sure what we have to go in it. It will be mostly cabbage and onion. If there’s another yellow squash in the fridge, we’ll use that, too.

…and back to Italy again

Tomorrow evening, it’s back to Italy! I’ve already skinned and seeded all the tomatoes in preparation.

We’ll fry the rest of the eggplant for an appetizer and, this time, save the peelings. Then we’ll make tomato-zucchini-eggplant-sausage pasta.

Here’s the basic idea:

• Brown the sausage and remove it leaving the fat in the pan.
• Cook chopped zucchini, some garlic, and chopped eggplant peelings in the fat for a couple of minutes. They should loose some moisture and get a little brown.
• Add the sausage back plus tomatoes, rosemary, sage, red wine, and maybe another can of crushed tomatoes if necessary. Let it all cook together slowly. Add some fresh basil at the last minute.
• Serve over pasta. I’m using penne this time.

On the side, we’ll have butternut squash slices broiled with butter and a little maple syrup.