Eggplant and tomato spaghetti

Eggplant and tomato spaghetti. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 

At the height of summer, when the markets are filled with Technicolor produce, pick out a beautiful, plump eggplant and a few heirloom tomatos and make this sumptuous variation on ratatouille. Minus the squash, it's still rich with roasted vegetal and herbal deliciousness. This recipe is adapted from Francis Lam's Let-My-Eggplant-Go-Free! Sauce

 Eggplant and Tomato Spaghetti

Serves 3 generous portions

1 pound eggplant, peeled and cut into ½ inch dice
1 tablespoon salt
3 ripe tomatoes
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 sprigs thyme or oregano, chopped
1 cup  water
6 leaves basil, chiffonade
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pound spaghetti, cooked

1. Place the eggplant cubes in a sieve over a bowl and toss with salt. Let sit for a half hour to draw the bitter juices out of the eggplant. Meanwhile, peel and cut the tomatoes into chunks.

2. In a heavy saucepan such as a Dutch oven, pour in the olive oil and set over low heat. Add the garlic cloves.

3. Wipe any moisture off of the eggplant. When the garlic sizzles, add the eggplant and stir to coat it with oil. Turn up the heat, add the tomato and herbs and stir. When the eggplant and tomato soften, add the liquid, let it come to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low. Cover the pot, leaving an edge exposed for steam to escape.

4. After about 20 minutes, the vegetables should be soft and melting and ready for the pasta. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve immediately, garnished with additional basil.

Text and images copyright 2013, Lucy Mercer.

Jeff's bruschetta

Jeff's bruschetta by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



My neighbor Jeff is a foodie. A man who truly enjoys getting in the kitchen and creating. One of the best things about being neighbors with and his family is that they will invite us over for dinner and feed us well. A second perk is that he shares recipes. He couldn't wait to tell me this one and when he did, I couldn't wait to make it. A simple little app using the best summer tomatoes you can find.

This is an informal recipe, so you'll just have to follow your instincts in the kitchen:

1. Assemble a baguette, a lemon, ricotta (whole milk's the way to go here, but if you all you have is low-fat, that'll work), a ripe tomato or two or three, some fresh basil and some fresh oregano, salt and pepper.

2. Take a baguette, slice it into thin rounds. If you're grilling, place slices on the grill long enough to get lovely grill marks. If you're indoors, toast the slices for a few minutes, just to crisp them up.

3. Stir together some ricotta, say about a 1/2 cup and add the zest of 1/2 the lemon. Stir in some chopped fresh oregano. Season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper.

4. Chop the tomato(es) and stir in some chopped basil, salt and pepper. I'm the kind of person who would add minced garlic at this point.

5. Top the grilled bread slices with a shmear of ricotta mixture and a spoonful of the tomato mixture. Garnish with a pinch of whole basil leaves.

And that's it! Make some extras and invite your neighbors over!



Summer's Best Stew: Ratatouille



Ratatouille and creamy grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



I've returned to the kitchen, my source for solace in the late summer. The light through the window is changing, it's amber coming through at a different angle, backlighting the spider web on the porch.

Spider web by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

My soul seeks comfort food, but my warm house isn't quite ready for day-long braises and Dutch ovens bubbling over with stewed chicken and bready dumplings. Ratatouille, thick with chunks of eggplant swimming in fresh tomato, I've found, speaks to my soul and lets me walk away from the table without needing a starch-induced nap.




Eggplants by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


There are at least two approaches to preparing ratatouille: the one-pot method, where each item is chopped and added to the pan gradually. This yields a tasty, but homogeneous stew. My preferred method requires roasting some of the vegetables, namely the eggplant, to give some textural variety to the final product. My recipe is evolving, first with the boilerplate recipe in the "Gourmet Cookbook," now tweaked by Francis Lam’s primer on Salon.com (previously published at Gourmet.com.) It is, to use Lam’s phrase, so good you’ll want to punch a hole in the wall (but please, don’t, somebody‘s mother will have to fix that.)

Redneck Ratatouille

I tend use whatever quantities of these vegetables I have on hand, given the general guidelines in the recipe. I’ve used roasted Poblano peppers and assorted banana and chili peppers instead of or in addition to the bell peppers. Just be mindful of the heat factor when cooking with the spicy peppers.

2 medium eggplant, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

Salt

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

3 large onions, peeled, halved, each half cut into 4 wedges

2 medium zucchini, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

2 medium yellow crookneck squash, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

4 large tomatoes, cored and chopped

2 tablespoons tomato paste (optional)

2 bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces

A handful of fresh basil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

1. Eggplant prep: follow this step only if you have the large globe eggplants which tend to be bitter. If cooking with the smaller Asian eggplants, proceed to the next step. Set up a colander over a larger bowl and place eggplant in colander. Pour out about a tablespoon of salt onto the eggplant and toss. Let eggplant drain for about 30 minutes.

2. In a large oven-proof pot, preferably one with a lid, pour in all but about 3 tablespoons of oil and turn heat to medium. Add garlic and onion and bring to a bubbling boil. Let cook for about 30 minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients. Don‘t walk away, because, you know, it‘s a pot of boiling oil.

3. Heat oven to 450 and get out a half-sheet pan or a large cast-iron skillet. Pour eggplant and squash and zucchini out onto the pan (you may need to do this in batches), pour remaining three tablespoons oil and some salt and pepper on the vegetables and set in oven to roast for about 30 minutes. You’re looking for a touch of caramelly brown on the edges of the veg, not blackened.

4. Ok, now we have a pot of boiling oil and alliums on the stove and a pan of roasting squash and aubergine in the oven. It’s time to turn your attention to the tomatoes. In a food processor, puree the tomatoes and peppers. Add to the onion and garlic oil and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Optional: if using tomato paste, you can add it to the pot with the tomatoes and peppers.

5. When tomato/onion/garlic/oil mixture is a rich red color, add in roasted squash/zuke/eggplant. Taste mixture for seasoning, then add salt, pepper and basil.

6. Turn oven to 300 and set Dutch oven with stew inside. Let ratatouille cook for at least one hour, and several more if you can. Remove pot from oven and let cool.

I serve ratatouille at room temperature over a bowl of creamy grits. Other choices are pasta such as rigatoni, or couscous, or polenta.

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Redneck Ratatouille

(Above: Tomatoes and Basil, Ready for Ratatouille.)

I discovered ratatouille last summer, not in some quaint out-of-the way Provencal restaurant, but in the pages of a half-dozen cookbooks in my own kitchen. It's a recipe somewhat like the alchemy of stock-making, where you need to accumulate enough stuff, in this case, summer's ripest produce, and turn it into gold.

Between the farmer's market and CSA box, I had enough eggplants, peppers, squash, tomatoes (heirloom and cherry), onions, and basil for a big pot of ratatouille. With the recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook as my guide (see last summer's post), salting and draining the eggplant, rather than roasting it, the dish turned out just fine. To cut down on the oil, I cooked the onion and squash in a small amount of water before adding them to the simmering tomato and pepper mixture. (A warning to mommies: it took for-bloody-ever to assemble and prepare all the produce, about two hours, because I was dealing with young children who were not in the proper ratatouille frame of mind.)

What makes mine Redneck Ratatouille is not that I add venison (sorry, a rather lame personal joke), but that I serve it with my version of polenta, using Dixie Mills yellow grits, cooked up with chicken broth and a tablespoon or two of butter. If I had Parmesan on hand, I would have stirred some in, too. The result? C'est magnifique! (even the cranky kids agreed!)

Summer in the CSA Box

All that's missing is a swimsuit and sunscreen! Everything that means summer to me is in this week's CSA box from Farmer's Fresh:

1. Four organic peaches. Someday soon I'll tell the story of my red clay South Carolina childhood and why I get so excited about the first peaches of the summer. (and if I'm lucky enough to find Sunny Slopes, I get all teary.)

2. A pint of blackberries (goodness knows, I have enough of these growing by my driveway, but these are certainly prettier.

3. Two cute eggplant (ratatouille will be on the menu this week!)

4. A fragrant bunch o'basil.

5. An assortment of sweet peppers.

6. Two big and a half dozen small tomatoes.

7. A storage onion and its baby cousin.

I can't wait to cook with all of this incredible produce!