Chicken Soup Made Easy

I’ve served you matzo ball soup before. But who has time to brown the chicken pieces? And besides, no one likes to pick meat off the bone when they’re drinking soup. It’s so messy.

Word to the wise: don’t do a Google image search for “chick” with SafeSearch off — unless, of course, you’re in the mood for that sort of thing.

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Aubergines

Yesterday’s discussion made me realize how little I know about eggplant. No, I hadn’t ever heard of Imam Bayildi. (This looks like a good recipe. And with pictures, too!) My whole eggplant world consisted of eggplant parmesan, baba ghanouj, grilled eggplant for grilled vegetable salad, eggplant and shitake mushrooms (a Chinese dish), and stuffed pickled eggplant.

Mmmm. Stuffed pickled eggplant.

I love eggplant. I should be less eggplant-ignorant. Did you know they’re in the nightshade family, related to potatoes and tomatoes? Here, let’s learn more history:

• Eggplant were first cultivated 4000 years ago in India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia
• Eggplant cuisine spread to China by 500 BCE
• By the 4th Century, the Moors had introduced eggplant to Spain
• But even in the 16th Century, Northern Europeans thought they caused insanity
• The Spanish introduced aubergines to Brazil in 1650 . . .
• And Thomas Jefferson introduced them to the US in 1806.

In tonight’s quest to find new and interesting eggplant recipes, I found this old post from The Domestic Goddess:

On with The Paper Chef! Whose cuisine will reign supreme this month? We’ll have to wait to find that out, but not to find out who is competing in this round. Who has the guts? Who has the glory? Who has the gall to combine eggplant, chocolate, stale bread and pomegranate into one dish?!? Read on…if you dare.

Um . . . okay. I dare.

Samer’s bread pudding with eggplant and a chocolate-pomegranate sauce gets my prize for a recipe which looks good and, I imagine, tastes good, too. But Lyn at Lex Culinaria has to win the Biggest Balls prize for her

… Chocolate Eggplant “Parmigiana” topped with warm buttered crab and a bitter chocolate-pomegranate syrup….

Crab. Crab. Take an outlandish ingredients list and add a crustacean to it — go, Lyn!

I checked Domestic Goddess’s blog and, sadly, it looks like the Goddess hasn’t hosted a Paper Chef competition since March, 2005. Damn shame — I could really get into a contest like that. (If I hosted something like that, would any of you take me up on it? How much of a bribe would you need?) But let’s eat more eggplant.

Naw, on second thought, I’m kicking this one back to you. What are your favorite eggplant recipes? And if you say “Imam Bayildi,” give me a link to a recipe which looks like the real deal.

You see, blogs are like a memory stick. Everything I want to remember, everything I might want or need access to later on, I put up here. If I develop total amnesia, I want to be able to read this thing and fake it well enough so no one will realize I’m not me anymore.

Good. I’m glad that’s clear. Now, make with the recipes.

D.

Eggplant Parmesan

Yesterday, Tammy asked me for an eggplant recipe. This is one of the best, especially if you’re cooking for people who are “mmm I don’t think so” about eggplant. They’ll be so overwhelmed by the deliciousness of this stuff, they won’t even realize they’re fressin aubergines.

This is from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, quite likely the last Italian cookbook you’ll ever need to buy. I’ll give you Marcella’s recipe along with my running commentary (parenthetic letter, A, B, C . . . like that).

My favorite way to eat eggplant is baba ghanouj, but you need to be a serious eggplant craver for that one. Eggplant Parmesan, however, is a crowd-pleaser.

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Mmmm, bagels

Yes, I’ve blogged my bagels before. I’ve given you a picture. I’ve given you a recipe.

But I’ve never given you a closeup.

My photography skills truly suck; this seems a bit out of focus, doesn’t it?

I’ll try to post later. Right now, I have to serve these guys up with some peanut butter (for Jake), cream cheese, lox, shallots, and capers (for Karen & me). Then it’s off to the hospital and gym, and if there’s any time left in the day, I need to crack open my manuscript, because . . .

I’ve finally figured out a satisfying ending. Now I just have to write the damnable thing.

D.

Tonight’s menu

My cousin Charlene, her husband, and their daughter came over for dinner tonight. They live in Puyallup, Washington, and while they visit Charlene’s brother (my cousin) Barry every year, they usually take the 5 south. This year, they took the 101.

Here’s the spread:

Bruschetta with a tapenade of tomatoes, shallots, basil, and a teeny bit of garlic. (Much more garlic on the bruschetta, naturally.)

Greek salad with Romaine and Red Leaf lettuces, feta, some kinda high quality olives, oil & vinegar dressing.

Ravioli. Both kinds: spinach/cheese with a tomato sauce, sweet potato with sage/butter sauce.

Focaccia. Yes, this was probably overkill, considering I made bruschetta, but what the hell. Jake likes focaccia.

Dessert: a fruit salad of ripe peaches, blueberries, and raspberries, served with warm Creme Anglaise. (That’s not the recipe I followed, but right now I’m too exhausted to go into much detail.)

Yes. Exhausted. Am I getting too old for this? I hope not — I still have to cook for all of you when you come to visit 🙂

D.

Pseudo gyros

Here’s a thumbnail of a disembodied mouth smiling at a gyro:

Sometimes I wonder how much time I waste searching Google Images for a high quality jpg to rip off. Then I shake myself all over and wonder about something else.

This time around, it struck me that if my readers don’t know what a gyro looks like, these pictures aren’t going to help. That’s why you’re only getting a thumbnail (not to mention the fact that the full size image frightens me). Anyway, in my quest for a gyro jpg, I found this dude, whom I suspect may be a kindred spirit. Here, he’s writing about French Dip with Au Jus:

Waiter at a crappy restaurant: “What can I get you?”

Me: “I would like French dip with cheese, Swiss cheese, and fries please!”

Waiter at a crappy restaurant: “Ummmm, ok.”

Me: “Oh, and don’t forget the Ahhh Jooooo!”

Hot lesbian in next booth: “Did you hear how sophisticated that man is? He makes me want to turn away from the lesbian lifestyle forever.”

Other hot lesbian in next booth: “I agree with you, but instead of becoming heterosexual, maybe we should become bi-sexual, I think that would please him more.”

Ah, but you’re not interested in Typical Male Fantasy #4875. You’re here for the food — specifically, how to make fast, tasty, homemade gyros. Follow me below the fold . . .

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Fressing

Seems like all we ever do on vacation is eat. Not that there’s anything wrong with eating; and from a coolly philosophical point of view, pleasure is pleasure, right? Some folks hike, some shop, some have sex with underage prostitutes. We eat.

Excuse me a second. Karen just put a slice of Key Lime pie under my nose.

True, we did the Cabaret the other night, and last night we saw Shrek 3 (meh. Better than Spiderman 3, but not nearly as fine as Exorcist 3. And Evil Dead 3, AKA Army of Darkness — now, there was a 3!) Otherwise, we’ve planned our days from one meal to the next. In brief, since all of these meals were good but none were rave-worthy, we had Italian the first night, sushi the second, Cuban/tapas the third. But I’d rather remember some meals from vacations past.

I suspect I could write a 13 on this. Hell, I probably already have.

Our honeymoon really did hit a culinary homerun. Perhaps because we were both in Europe for the first time — perhaps that made the food memories more intense. Our first night in Brugge, we had a mixed grill at an oooold place that played the Best of Lionel Richie over ‘n over again. Lots of meat that night. Too much meat. We rolled back to our pensione and crashed.

I had some of the best and some of the worst food of my life in France. The worst: steak and fries at a roadside diner. I’d swear that steak was liver, and the fries, boiled, then dressed with oil. The best: a tie between mussels at a 2-star restaurant across from the Louvre, and blood sausage in a little place near one of Da Vinci’s supposed burial grounds.

Baguettes and pate really do make for a satisfying lunch, the red table wine in Italy really is top notch, and the Germans really do know their beers.

New Orleans food kicked ass, too. Oysters Rockefeller, mmmm. And haven’t I written about soft-shelled crab swimming in clarified butter?

Ipswich clams at the Ventura Pier, the one that washed away. Seared duck breast at Hoppe’s near Morro Bay. Scampi at La Pergola’s, North Beach.

Yeah, you all knew I would never last as a vegetarian.

D.