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Aug. 13th, 2005 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonMemo to self: Self, as you know perfectly well, now that you're old and decrepit the limit is two drinks per night. Two shall be thy limit, and neither three nor four shalt thou consume. And in particular, a beer followed by a gin and tonic followed by a Jameson's followed by another gin and tonic followed by a wobbly bike ride home and a nice big glass of wine before bed is RIGHT out.
*moan*
The blow-out last night was a party to celebrate (or, rather, mourn) the departure of my favorite co-worker, Smart Snarky Queer Boy, who is graduating and going off to start his real career. I shall miss him sorely--he'd gotten into the habit of dropping by my office every morning to regale me with his latest romantic misadventures, or spread gossip about what so-and-so (closet case from Central Admin) was up to at the bar last night, and he was fond of telling me I was the best boss he'd ever had, and he was in general a delight to have around. *sigh*
Anyway, despite the morning-after ouchiness of head and creakyness of body, I hauled ass up and out at 6:15 this morning, because I needed to get to the Farmer's Market before parking became impossible. I've really lost much of my pleasure in going to the F.M. these past few years; it's almost painfully crowded, and close to half the stalls don't even sell produce or food anymore, just lots of cheap crap jewelry and quasi-ethnic clothing and candles and knicknacks and assorted dreck. But I needed good red peppers and Japanese eggplant, which are hard to find elsewhere, so off I went.
And now, having consumed a gallon or so of coffee, I'm preparing one of my all-time favorite summer dishes,
Sicilian Salad with Roasted Peppers and Eggplant. The recipe comes from Annie Somerville's Fields of Greens (a marvelous cookbook), and it's not really a salad so much as a composed vegetable kind of thing, but whatever.
Preparation of the dish represents a paradox of sorts; it's meant for the glorious hot days of late summer, when ripe red peppers are plentiful, but it also requires a fair amount of oven time, and hence can be a logistical challenge if the weather's already stifling. I save it for the interludes like today that we tend to get in mid-August, when the nights have really started to cool down, and the mornings are damp and mild. I do the cooking early in the day, and then the house has a chance to cool off, and anyway the dish benefits from a nice long interlude of flavor-mingling and gentle marination in its own juices.
What you need:
3-4 big, firm, very ripe red peppers, thick-walled and juicy
3-4 Japanese eggplants (the long thin tubular ones)
a head of very fresh unblemished garlic
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
fresh basil
a dozen or so olives (Kalamata or Gaeta)
Procedure: Wash the vegetables, and separate the garlic cloves, removing the loose papery skin but leaving them in their husks. Slice the peppers lengthwise into three or four chunks, cutting down the apex of each outward-curving section so as to produce pieces that are as flat as possible. Turn on the broiler, and either oil a baking sheet or line it with no-stick aluminum foil (*fabulous* invention). Put the pepper pieces skin-side-up on the sheet and bung them under the broiler. (You may need to do this in batches.) When the skins are well-blackened, put them in a large bowl and cover it tightly, so they can keep on steaming gently and cooking through. Be sure to save any liquid that has rendered out in the broiling process and add it to the bowl. Turn off the broiler, and turn on the oven to 350 degrees.
Slice the eggplant on an acute diagonal into pieces maybe 3/4 of an inch thick, and toss them and the garlic cloves in a bowl with a good splash of olive oil until everything is well-coated. Spead them on the baking sheet and roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Check them from time to time, brushing or spraying the eggplant slices with olive oil if they seem to be getting too dry, and turn them over about halfway through cooking. You want both eggplant and garlic to be completely tender and cooked through, but not mushy. When they're done, take them out and let them cool.
Take the pepper pieces out of the bowl in which they've been reposing, and add to the liquid collected at the bottom a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar and a healthy splash of olive oil. Remove the skin from the peppers (it should peel off easily), and slice them into half-inch strips. Return them to the bowl. Slice the eggplant into strips, de-husk the garlic, and put both in the bowl. Chop up a handful of fresh basil and the olives, and add them as well. Mix everything up gently. Taste, and add more vinegar if needed.
You can serve this right away, but as noted above, it benefits by some time in the fridge to let the flavors mingle and marry. Just let it come to room temperature before serving.
One could experiment with adding other vegetables; I keep meaning to try this with golden zucchini, sliced into thin strips and roasted with the eggplant. Fresh tomatoes, chunked up and added at the last minute, would ring some interesting changes on the overall flavor, but I think I'd rather have them alongside, and maybe some feta cheese, and sourdough bread. All that, along with some sausages, will form the picnic that I plan to have with Mr. P. this evening. Ahh, the glories of summer, now that it's finally cooled the hell down enough so that it's pleasant to be outside.
*moan*
The blow-out last night was a party to celebrate (or, rather, mourn) the departure of my favorite co-worker, Smart Snarky Queer Boy, who is graduating and going off to start his real career. I shall miss him sorely--he'd gotten into the habit of dropping by my office every morning to regale me with his latest romantic misadventures, or spread gossip about what so-and-so (closet case from Central Admin) was up to at the bar last night, and he was fond of telling me I was the best boss he'd ever had, and he was in general a delight to have around. *sigh*
Anyway, despite the morning-after ouchiness of head and creakyness of body, I hauled ass up and out at 6:15 this morning, because I needed to get to the Farmer's Market before parking became impossible. I've really lost much of my pleasure in going to the F.M. these past few years; it's almost painfully crowded, and close to half the stalls don't even sell produce or food anymore, just lots of cheap crap jewelry and quasi-ethnic clothing and candles and knicknacks and assorted dreck. But I needed good red peppers and Japanese eggplant, which are hard to find elsewhere, so off I went.
And now, having consumed a gallon or so of coffee, I'm preparing one of my all-time favorite summer dishes,
Sicilian Salad with Roasted Peppers and Eggplant. The recipe comes from Annie Somerville's Fields of Greens (a marvelous cookbook), and it's not really a salad so much as a composed vegetable kind of thing, but whatever.
Preparation of the dish represents a paradox of sorts; it's meant for the glorious hot days of late summer, when ripe red peppers are plentiful, but it also requires a fair amount of oven time, and hence can be a logistical challenge if the weather's already stifling. I save it for the interludes like today that we tend to get in mid-August, when the nights have really started to cool down, and the mornings are damp and mild. I do the cooking early in the day, and then the house has a chance to cool off, and anyway the dish benefits from a nice long interlude of flavor-mingling and gentle marination in its own juices.
What you need:
3-4 big, firm, very ripe red peppers, thick-walled and juicy
3-4 Japanese eggplants (the long thin tubular ones)
a head of very fresh unblemished garlic
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
fresh basil
a dozen or so olives (Kalamata or Gaeta)
Procedure: Wash the vegetables, and separate the garlic cloves, removing the loose papery skin but leaving them in their husks. Slice the peppers lengthwise into three or four chunks, cutting down the apex of each outward-curving section so as to produce pieces that are as flat as possible. Turn on the broiler, and either oil a baking sheet or line it with no-stick aluminum foil (*fabulous* invention). Put the pepper pieces skin-side-up on the sheet and bung them under the broiler. (You may need to do this in batches.) When the skins are well-blackened, put them in a large bowl and cover it tightly, so they can keep on steaming gently and cooking through. Be sure to save any liquid that has rendered out in the broiling process and add it to the bowl. Turn off the broiler, and turn on the oven to 350 degrees.
Slice the eggplant on an acute diagonal into pieces maybe 3/4 of an inch thick, and toss them and the garlic cloves in a bowl with a good splash of olive oil until everything is well-coated. Spead them on the baking sheet and roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Check them from time to time, brushing or spraying the eggplant slices with olive oil if they seem to be getting too dry, and turn them over about halfway through cooking. You want both eggplant and garlic to be completely tender and cooked through, but not mushy. When they're done, take them out and let them cool.
Take the pepper pieces out of the bowl in which they've been reposing, and add to the liquid collected at the bottom a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar and a healthy splash of olive oil. Remove the skin from the peppers (it should peel off easily), and slice them into half-inch strips. Return them to the bowl. Slice the eggplant into strips, de-husk the garlic, and put both in the bowl. Chop up a handful of fresh basil and the olives, and add them as well. Mix everything up gently. Taste, and add more vinegar if needed.
You can serve this right away, but as noted above, it benefits by some time in the fridge to let the flavors mingle and marry. Just let it come to room temperature before serving.
One could experiment with adding other vegetables; I keep meaning to try this with golden zucchini, sliced into thin strips and roasted with the eggplant. Fresh tomatoes, chunked up and added at the last minute, would ring some interesting changes on the overall flavor, but I think I'd rather have them alongside, and maybe some feta cheese, and sourdough bread. All that, along with some sausages, will form the picnic that I plan to have with Mr. P. this evening. Ahh, the glories of summer, now that it's finally cooled the hell down enough so that it's pleasant to be outside.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-14 12:41 am (UTC)Sniff.
Well, I ever win the lottery, lots of people are in beeg beeg trouble, that's all.