Archive | July, 2010

Aubergine revelation

By on July 11, 2010 in Food, Garden

Gratin with onion, eggplant, peppers, fennel, summer squash, tomatoes, herbs and cheese

Sometimes bitter, sometimes tasteless, but almost always slimy, especially deep-fried with a greasy coating, eggplant has always been right up there with beets and okra on the short list of vegetables I really, really dislike. I even hate the name “eggplant,” although I love “aubergine,” the French name.

The plants are attractive, though, the fruits beautiful, and I’m a sucker for attractive plants with beautiful fruits, so that’s why I have eggplant on hand in spite of my dislike for it.

I’ve been reading the blogs of Ken and Walt, Americans who live in my favorite part of the Loire Valley in France, for years now. (They live only a few km from the place where we love to stay in the Loire, so we were lucky to spend some time with them on our last visit in 2007.) I have always marveled at their blog posts about the wonderful food they cook, so I paid attention when Ken commented on my recent post about my eggplant problem and suggested a gratin recipe.

I was starting with too big a gratin dish and too few eggplants, so I when I roasted the eggplant slices ahead of time, I also roasted a couple of thick-sliced sweet Walla Walla onions, two big red bell peppers and one yellow one, and a couple of fennel bulbs. Then I layered it all into the gratin dish: onions first, then eggplant, chunks of roasted pepper, a generous sprinkling of fresh thyme leaves, grated mozzarella, then fennel, a few summer squash, and a layer of thickly sliced tomatoes. I topped it all with more mozzarella, more thyme, and a drizzle of olive oil. After an hour in a 400-degree oven, I added freshly grated parmesan and lots of torn basil leaves, turned off the oven and let it continue to cook down for another 30 minutes or so as the oven cooled off. With a crusty baguette and glass of rose, it was dinner.

Now. Given those ingredients, this couldn’t be bad, but I fully expected to pick out the eggplant and eat the rest. Instead, the silky–not slimy–slightly sweet flesh of the aubergine was my favorite part of a really delicious dish!

I’ve made vegetable gratins before, but my results have always been sort of ho-hum. I think the difference this time was roasting the vegetables ahead of time for more flavor and using more cheese instead of just a perfunctory sprinkling of parmesan.

Thanks, Ken! The recipe will be fun to play with all summer, varying the herbs, cheese, and selection of vegetables. Whatever else I do, next time I’ll use more eggplant aubergine.

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July Garden Update

By on July 6, 2010 in Food, Garden

After a very slow start, summer weather has arrived and my garden is finally starting to produce. I’m getting about a dozen a day of each variety of cherry tomatoes, the sungolds and the sugar snacks, but none of the large tomatoes show any color yet. The plants are loaded with big green fruit, so it will be fantastic when it finally happens.

For the past few days, I’ve been collecting three or four green beans a day and adding them to a bag in the crisper drawer waiting to accumulate enough for two servings. I’m tired of waiting, so tomorrow night’s dinner menu will feature a tiny helping of perfect little beans.

Only one summer squash so far, the beauty you see in the photo above. I may carve it up and serve it with the beans.

The eggplants, on the other hand, are producing like crazy, especially the plant with the little purple ones. I’d love suggestions for what to do with them all, because I don’t normally use them except in ratatouille.

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