Eggplant Avalanche

I think that I have mentioned that I have never had any luck growing eggplant before. Well, that worm has turned. This year we have had oodles of the fruits. The white variety, which reminds me of ostrich eggs, have probably been the most prolific, but the purple ones are coming on strong, and I have harvested a few Chinese eggplant too.

So far we have had them in salads, pastas, a tart, and an Indian stew, but several nights ago I decided to make some eggplant sandwiches for dinner. I sliced the eggplant thick, sprinkled the slices with salt, and let them sweat for fifteen minutes or so while heating my little convection oven up to 400 degrees. After blotting the eggplant slices with a paper towel to absorb the bitter juice that they gave up, I brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper before popping them in the oven, where I baked them about 12 minutes or so on each side, until they were brown and soft. I brushed the eggplant slices again with a balsamic vinaigrette after they came out of the oven. While they were cooling a bit, I toasted the bread and sliced some tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. To assemble the sandwich, I stacked the eggplant, some arugula leaves, the mozzarella, the tomatoes (which I sprinkled with salt and pepper), and a few basil leaves on the bottom slice of toasted bread. I spread the top slice of bread with some lemon mayonnaise and added it to the sandwich.

We both pronounced it delicious, but I found myself wondering what it would have been like with some prosciutto...

Summertime

I have a long-time friend who moved away a couple of years ago, but I always think of her when I eat a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad. I have known her for more than twenty years, and every time I have ever seen her eat one of these salads, she has said something to the effect of "Man, this is what I love about summer." Who could argue with her? Tonight's version involved three different tomato varieties (including a succulent Brandywine) on a bed of arugula, several little balls of fresh mozzarella, and a nice scattering of julienned basil, all dressed with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

We had the salad with some grilled chicken and roasted fingerling potatoes. I only have a couple of those left, and I used the last of the onions today in a big pot of eggplant-tomato-pepper pasta sauce. The eggplant continue to produce and the zucchini are really just starting, but everything else is ramping down, even the tomatoes. We are leaving later this week for a visit to some family in California, and I can tell that, by the time we get back, the days of tomato abundance will be over. We will still have some to eat into September, but the summer is inevitably starting to fade. I think that next week I will start some things for fall, so that we will have turnips and chard and lettuce when the weather turns cooler.

I used some more tomatoes and eggplant last night in a savory tart, the recipe for which is in the original Greens Cookbook, by Deborah Madison. It was quite delicious, and it paired very nicely with a fruity French rose wine.

Tomato Heaven

I was happy to find a trickle of fresh tomatoes when I returned from vacation. It wasn't long before that trickle turned into a flood, despite what has been a very unpleasantly hot summer. They're not all beautiful fruits, but some of the ugliest are actually the tastiest.

I have given quite a few away, and I tried to soak up some of the surplus today by making some tomato chutney and a pitcher of gazpacho. The chutney turned out great; I melded together two different recipes I found on epicurious.com. I spiced it with ginger, coriander, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, black mustard, cayenne, nigella seeds, and a cinnamon stick, and I added golden raisins and onions along with the tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar. The taste I tried was delicious; we'll see how the flavors develop.

Tonight we are having a very locavore kind of dinner. Whole Foods had some locally raised lamb loin chops, which I am grilling. (They really seem to be carrying a lot more locally raised food; their consumer research must have shown that is a key value for their customers.) With them we're having some roasted fingerling potatoes from the garden, along with some purple pole beans (there are a few in the photograph above), which actually turn green when you cook them. I was going to open a Virginia wine to go with it, but we have a really great Cotes-du-Rhone that will pair well with the lamb, so that's the direction I decided to go.