Eggplant Dahl with yellow split peas

Dahl (dal) is a thick stew-like dish made from dried lentils, peas or beans and provides a protein punch for people on a mostly vegetarian diet.  For people on a budget, this is a winner!  A pound of yellow split peas for a dollar along with an eggplant and some crisper staples will provide you with at least 6-8 servings!  Instead of using a ton of individual spices to liven it up, I choose to use Penzey's Garam Masala.  It's a lovely mix of coriander, black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, charnushka, caraway, cloves, ginger and nutmeg.

Grilled Eggplant with Basil Tomato Salad

Our basil is out of control this year - which we really don’t mind, but we are always having to find new ways of using it! We were trying to come up with a twist on a Caprese Salad, and we think this did the trick...

We started out by making the salad so that it had at least 30 minutes to chill out in the fridge. Diced 2 medium tomatoes, added 1 16oz can of garbanzo beans, a couple tbsp capers, the juice of 1 lemon, some salt, white pepper, olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar. Then, out to the deck to harvest about 12 BIG basil leaves which I chopped up and added to my salad. Into the fridge for at least 30 minutes, but the longer the better!

Now on to the base of this dish. We sliced 1 medium eggplant into half inch thick rounds and brushed those rounds with olive oil, and just put some salt on for seasoning. We grilled the eggplant over medium heat for about 5 minutes per side. At the last moment, I placed some sliced fresh mozzarella onto each eggplant round just to get it melting slightly... then off the grill.

A scoop of the tomato salad onto the eggplant and mozz finishes this super simple and yummy sidedish. Personally, I don’t eat the skin of the eggplant, but I keep it on while grilling to hold it together. It’s easy to remove after you have it on your plate - the eggplant "meat" comes right out!

Now we're trying to find ideas for the next basil recipe!

Twin Grilled Whole Chickens

Exactly like the title says - twin whole chickens, roasted on the grill. Why not? We try to avoid running the oven for long periods of time during the summer, so we're grilling everything. This time, we wanted to make something that would stretch a few nights (and would be inexpensive, as well) so we spotted these twin-packs of ~4.5lb chickens on sale for $.99/pound! SOLD!

We determined right away that we'd try roasting them whole on the grill at the same time, using the outer burners to maintain the 350-degree temp and leaving the middle burner - over which the chickens would sit - turned off. Like most grills, ours has a thermometer that we'd be monitoring closely and adjusting those burners accordingly. Other than that, we'd treat it just like any other roasted chicken.

So.... we brined them overnight in a solution of water, salt, sugar, bay leaves, spices, hot sauce, and soy sauce. About an hour before they were to meet the grill, we took them out and rinsed them down and threw them back in the fridge. Shortly after, we went out to preheat the grill and grabbed a bunch of fresh herbs from the back deck - basil, tarragon, rosemary, lavender, and oregano are all growing happily out there.



Finally ready to go, we melted some butter and pulled the chickens out. Salt and pepper the inside and stuffed a big handful of herbs in each, then tied the legs together. Brushed on some melted butter on the outside and added the final spices - salt and pepper and smoked paprika - to the outer skin.

Grill at about 400, we popped the two chickens on (can't believe we didn't take pics of them on the grill! next time..) and shut that grill up. We could hear the skin popping and crackling as soon as they hit the hot grates! The temperature immediatly dropped to about 360, so we let that go. At about 4.5 lbs each, we'd be looking at 1.5 hours but we'd start checking the temp at 1 hour.

An hour later we opened the cover for the first time and they were happily cooking away! Took the temp and it seemed that we'd be on schedule for that 1.5 hours... sure enough, a half-hour later, all temp readings came back "ready" and the twins came off to sit under some foil for a resting period.

The chicken came out wonderfully... perfectly cooked, not uneven at all, some grilled flavor but not overly smokey, just juicy and flavorful! To accompany our twin birds (we only ate part of one, and have lots leftover!) we made a ratatouille with eggplant, tomatoes, onions, green pepper, tossed with some olive oil, dried thyme and basil, salt and pepper - and roasted that in a 400-degree oven for ~45 minutes. Delicious!

Chicken Eggplant Casserole

I spied some nice shiny aubergines aka beautiful Italian eggplants at the store the other day, so I scooped them up immediately. The poor things sat in the fridge for a couple of days before I remembered them, but they were good to go when M and I came up with a crazy-off-the-cuff-I-hope-this-is-edible-recipe.

We browned some ground chicken with some olive oil, sage, basil and S&P. Once browned, we removed from the pan and sautéed some onion, garlic and diced green pepper for about 10 minutes and then we added the star – half moon slices of our eggplants. We let that go another 5 minutes and added some sliced baby bella mushrooms to the pan. After deglazing with about a cup of chardonnay, we added a 32 oz can of diced tomatoes, some cream and we returned the chicken to the pan.



After reducing the sauce for about 15 minutes, we topped it with some mozzarella cheese and some bread crumbs and set it under the broiler for about 8 minutes. Came out with a great crust on top and tasting delicious! Real comfort food... this tasted like Eggplant Parmesean, but without all the lenghty process that goes into making Egg Parm... made excellent leftovers, too. This recipe is a keeper!

Baba Ganoush

We had been itching to try our hand at Baba Ganoush for a while, we've always loved it in plates at Boston restaurants like the Red Fez and the West Street Grill... We love eggplant, we love roasting, and we love lemon and garlic - so it is a natural!

Poked holes with a fork in one large eggplant and set it in a baking dish and into a 400-degree oven for just over 30 minutes. That eggplant went through quite a transformation during that time - going from a vibrant, shiny purple veggie to a wrinkled, shriveled-up one... it was quite a fast aging process!



We tested the flesh of the eggplant with a fork and found it to be nice and soft, so we set it aside to cool and pulled out the old food processor, a can of tahini, lemons, extra virgin olive oil, and minced up a couple big cloves of garlic.

When the eggplant cooled, we removed and discarded the very top and bottom and then cut the eggplant lengthwise into quarters. From that configuration, it was pretty easy to just peel the skin off the flesh in a few big strips. After that, it's into the food processor...



Give that a good initial spin while adding the juice of two lemons (about 4 tablespoons). Then add the minced garlic and a few big dollops of the tahini paste and a big pinch of kosher salt. More spinning and then we tried it... it didn't seem to be getting to the consistency we were looking for so we added some olive oil and spun it for a good couple of minutes - that really started to even it out. Consistency where we wanted it, we checked the flavoring and maybe added a little more lemon and olive oil. One last spin and then out of the processor and into the fridge for a good sit.

After about an hour we were ready to go. Chopped up some fresh parsley and added it at the last minute... cut up some soft pita bread and we ate the baba ganoush with the pitas and some pepperoncinis along with a tomato and feta salad! Came out great - the longer in the fridge, the better!

Ratatouille with Grilled Chicken

Annnnnd... WE'RE BACK!

Today, yesterday, and the day before that, it has been raining in Boston. The baseball game was rained out, the grass and trees and flowers are getting much-needed (but still very gloomy) water. Should be looking up for the weekend, which is what counts. And this past weekend, it was warm and dry enough to once again fire up the ghetto-grill (our camping grill, being used until we buy a real one) and make some grilled chicken pieces.

Let's go to Boston Chef #2 for the chicken, before heading to BC#1 for the Ratatouille...

We had a sampler pack of three thighs, three drums, and three wings that I brined for a couple hours before taking out, rinsing, and putting back in the fridge for another 1/2 hour for it to rest and relax (tough life, chicken pieces)... A gentle salt, pepper, paprika seasoning to the outside and they went onto a high grill for about 4 minutes/side before turning the heat to low and covering for another 15 minutes or so. Lots of flare-ups from the fat, but leaving the cover on pretty much contained them, cut down cooking time, AND gave the chicken great flavor.

Now over to Boston Chef #1 with the Ratatouille...

By complete chance, we had all the ingredients for a veggie dish that I’ve been wanting to try out for quite some time – Ratatouille. Since the other Boston Chef was in heaven because he finally had a chance to grill up some chicken outside, it was on me to prepare the accompanying dish inside. The stars were aligned that day, my friends, for I found an eggplant in the back of the refrigerator. I bought it on a whim a few days earlier with nothing in mind and I had forgotten about it until now. Low and behold I also had zucchini on hand... looks like ratatouille tonight!



All veggies are cut up into 1 inch chunks: medium eggplant, 2 small zucchinis, 1 large onion, 5 plum tomatoes. (I would have thrown in a green or red pepper if I’d had one.) Toss the veggies with some olive oil, 2 tbs tomato sauce, fresh thyme from the back porch, garlic powder, salt & pepper. We cooked this French Provencal casserole in enameled cast iron dish at 400-425F for about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Sprinkled with a little parmesan cheese before serving. It was better than I expected and definitely will cook this up when entertaining!

Before cooking:


And after, with the chicken... LETS EAT!

Eggplant Parmesan

As you can tell from previous posts, we watch what we eat in an avoid-processed-sugar-or-flour fashion... so we only eat whole wheat pasta. Obviously, this fact makes it tough to make lasagna with big, broad sheets of pasta - but we still love the steamy goodness of a big plate of sauce and cheese and filling pulled straight out of the oven and the wonderfully delicious leftovers that come as a reward for all the work. So what can we do for filling that is not pasta? Why, eggplant, of course!

To drain the bitterness out of the eggplant, we slice 2 big eggplants up (the round way, not lengthwise) and layer them in a colander with generous amounts of salt on each layer. We put that colander in a big glass bowl and cover the layers of eggplant with a sheet of plastic and another bowl that is heavily weighed down. Leave that in the fridge for a few hours and you'll see the liquid draining to the bottom, taking some of that bitterness with it.

Next step is to fry those eggplant slices up. We do an easy assembly line of rinse eggplant slice, pat dry, BARELY dust with wheat flour, egg wash, breadcrumbs, into a big pan with about 1/2" of canola oil.

Fry those bad boys up for about 3 min/side and set on a paper towel-lined plate.


At the same time, we made our sauce. See Our Meat Sauce entry - we make it basically the same as this for our "eggie parm."

Sauce:


Other ingredients - fresh basil and fresh and shredded mozzarella.

CONSTRUCTION TIME! 1/2 layer of sauce, spread about in a "pam" sprayed glass baking dish just to coat the bottom and prevent burning; layer fried eggplant; layer sauce; layer mozzarella and basil; layer fried eggplant; layer sauce; layer mozzarella and basil; layer fried eggplant; layer sauce; layer mozzarella and basil plus some shredded mozz and some grated parmesan on the top to round out the cheese. Sweet...



BAKE! We went 350 for about 40 minutes.. worked for us!



Score: Eggplant Parm.. 10! The big one-oh! 1000000!!! No bitterness, so tender, the eggplant. Fresh basil and mozz give a wonderful FRESH flavor... sausage in the sauce makes everything perfect.

Leftovers: 0! The disaster we alluded to from our last post - we left that whole big platter of de-bittered, fried eggplant, sauce, and baked goodness out OVERNIGHT... no leftovers for us, the remainder after dinner when in the garbage the next day. So, we shed a tear and move on...

What was, and could have been again: