Two delicious ways to eat eggplant without an oven

No this isn't a fashion blog all of a sudden. When I came home from work on Monday, I discovered that H had organized half of my shoes all in a pretty row. She LOVES my shoes, and she treats them right too!


The first way to eat eggplant without turning on the oven:
This week I made one of my favorite Greek vegetable dishes, and if I do say so myself, it was truly delicious. So tasty in fact that we couldn't get any pictures of it! We bought a gigantic globe of an eggplant as well as 2 pints of green beans from our CSA, so I decided to make a Greek λαδερά (literally oily, but typically just stove-cooked vegetables) dish out of them. As long as you're willing to sit near the kitchen and stir every 15 minutes or so for an hour and a half, this dish is virtually effortless.

Eggplant and Green Bean Giahni (φασολάκια γιαχνί με μελιτζάνες)
This makes 2 quarts or so.
1/4 - 1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
2 pints fresh green beans, tips trimmed and halved
1 large or two medium eggplant, cubed to 1-2 inch pieces
1 large green pepper, sliced
28 oz can diced tomatoes
3 dried hot peppers
salt and pepper to taste
water, if needed (we used 3/4 cups)

This recipe hardly needs directions, it's so straightforward. What you do need is a good large stockpot or dutch oven.

Saute onions in 1/4 oil until they turn caramel colored. Add green pepper, eggplant, and green beans. Saute for a couple of minutes. Add tomatoes and hot peppers, salt, and water to submerge the veggies if it bothers you that they aren't all in liquid at the beginning of cooking.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

This dish is perfect with crusty bread, a thick slice of feta cheese, and a glass of wine.

The Second way to eat eggplant without turning on the oven:
We love eggplant around here, so we've stocked up on not only the large globe eggplants, but also on the long and slender Chinese eggplants. Tonight I made a quick stir-fry with eggplant, edamame, tomatoes, and bok choy.

Eggplant, Bok Choy and Edamame
Serves 3-4
2 cups edamame
2 heads of bok choy, greens and white stalk separated and chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 Chinese eggplant, sliced
Olive oil or vegetable oil for stirfry
2 smallish tomatoes, quartered or smaller
soy sauce
maple syrup
Chili paste with garlic
sesame oil

Stirfry the white stalk of the bok choy until it loses its rawness. Add garlic and bok choy greens, edamame and eggplant.
Mix up the sauce, and reduce the heat on the stirfry to medium low. Add the sauce and cook for 3-5 minutes. In the last minute, toss in the tomato.
We loved this dish with brown rice.



And a bonus, the kid version, edamame, bok choy, and brown rice without the spicy sauce

yummy summer treat!

One of the blogs that I like is Weelicious. It's a mom who cares about making healthy food for her kids. Some of her recipes look fantastic!

I was feeling in the mood for some ice cream so we made this recipe.

Chocolate Ice Cream

1/3 c fat free greek yogurt (we used an entire 6 ounce container because I didn't want a partial yogurt floating around in the fridge)
2 TBSP honey
2 tsp vanilla
bbbbb njdjdfgfcg gggggggg g (this was Alex's addition to the recipe)
1 TBSP cocoa powder
2 c sliced banana (frozen)
1/4 c sliced strawberry (frozen)

Blend the first 4 ingredients. Add the fruit and blend until smooth and creamy. Serve!

Yesterday I sat down with the kids while they were having a snack and cut up some bananas and strawberries. I had to cut up an extra banana and quite a few strawberries because the slices kept getting eaten. I put those in the freezer over night and then today we made the ice cream. My numbers were very approximate. I'm pretty sure we had more than 2 cups of bananas and 1/4 cup of strawberries.

Today when Alex woke up from nap, we got out the food processor (I used that instead of the blender because our blender is wussy).

The kids were great helpers at pushing the button on the food processor.

We had to open the lid a few times to test the final product.

This took less than 15 minutes to make and that was with 2 little helpers.

We all liked it. Patrick pointed out that it was a little bit tangy from the amount of yogurt we put in it. If you used flavored yogurt, it would probably be fine or if you used the amount that the recipe suggests.


If you zoom in, Alex's head does NOT have a scratch on it. It's ice cream.

It's a really good consistency for Alex to practice feeding himself. It just gets a little messy, he got a bath after he was done eating. I want to try making this again using other fruits. I think the banana is critical for the consistency but you could easily sub in some mango and leave out the cocoa powder. Adding just a few mini chocolate chips would also be quite tasty.

Flammkuchen!

Yesterday I went to a friend's house to bake Flammkuchen, and it was surprisingly easy (There is lots of Flammkuchen in Heidelberg because we're not too far from Alsace.)! We looked up a yeast-free recipe that went like this:

For dough:
250g (ca 2 cups) Flour
2.5 Tbsp Canola Oil
150ml (ca 2/3 cup) Water
Pinch of Salt

For toppings:
250g (ca. 1 cup) Crème Frâiche
1 onion (can be red or sweet onions)
1 Tbsp Butter
125g (ca. 1/4lb) Bacon
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 clove Garlic

dried basil

Combine ingredients for crust. The dough shouldn’t be sticky. Slice onions into rings and sauté in butter until clear (don’t caramelize). Cook bacon until crisp. Finely chop garlic and add it with seasonings to the cream. Roll out the dough as thinly as possible and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. On the highest heat your oven will go (or around 400-450 degrees Fahrenheit) bake for around 10-15 minutes, or until the dough has begun to create bubbles and you see nice browning (you don’t want burnt!). Watch carefully while baking.

 We also put tomatoes on it, and it was delicious. The website also mentioned that the dough works well for pizza dough in a pinch, and I bet a whole-wheat version would work, too.

Beet, Eggplant, and Squash Curry, and our local beach

We have a whole drawer full of vegetables, including some summer squash that we don't like on their own, and some beets and potatoes that have been sitting there for a couple of weeks. So we decided it was time to whip out the curry pot!

Vegetable Curry with Coconut Milk
Serves 4

2 T Olive Oil
1 leek, sliced lengthwise and finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 medium beets, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic
1-2 T curry powder (recipe follows)
1 tsp ginger
1 cinnamon stick
14 oz can chopped tomatoes
1 potato or 2-3 new potatoes, quartered and thinly sliced
3 summer squash, halved and sliced thinly
1 eggplant, quartered and sliced thinly
1 green pepper
fresh Basil leaves
14 oz can coconut milk
Brown Rice

1) chop the veggies up.
2) Heat some oil in a large frying pan or skillet. Add onions and leeks and saute for 10 minutes or more.
3) Toss in the beets. Because I used unroasted beets, these have the longest cooking time by far and need at least 13-15 more minutes cooking than the other vegetables.
4) When the onion has softened and browned a bit, add the curry, ginger, and cinnamon stick and let all the spices roast for 2 minutes.
5) Add the tomatoes, eggplant, pepper, squash, and potatoes. Stir well and cover the pot. Cook for 20 minutes or more until your potatoes and squash are cooked.
6) Add the coconut milk, and stir well. Cook for 5 more minutes.


Eggplants, ready to go

This picture is for Dianne, these potatoes were out of this world good. They cooked faster than the squash!

All the veg, save the leeks and onions, in various states of preparation


Sauteing the leeks and onions. To this I added the beets after about 10 minutes, and then let the beets also saute for about 10 minutes.

The curry minus the coconut milk, that goes in in the last few minutes.


Curry with brown basmati rice, on the plate

Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Powder, from World Vegetarian

Makes 6 Tablespoons
2 T coriander seeds
1 T cumin seeds
2 tsp peppercorns
1 1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
5-6 whole cloves
3 dried hot chiles, crumbled
1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric

Heat a small frying pan over medium heat. Roast the whole seed spices until they smell a bit toasty. Add the turmeric and cook for 10 seconds. Transfer the spices to a clean coffee grinder and grind as finely as possible. Store out of direct sunlight and heat.

We ate our curry with brown basmati rice, and it was scrumptious!

This weekend, we finally ventured down to the James River, where we were promised a beach. I'm not sure I'd call it a beach, but it was pretty. H had a blast though, and ended up like our own little castaway. She met a little boy and together they caught a couple of tadpoles. Great fun!
Throwing rocks and pestering the water bug swarm.

High Summer CSA

The first five or six weeks of our CSA here in RVA, we were up to our ears in green food. Chard, kales, green onions, leeks, beet greens, arugula, lettuce heads, zucchini. We began to grow tired of thinking of ways to eat green food, in fact. Thankfully high summer has arrived. It's hot and muggy, but the veggies are colorful!

This week we got 4 summer squash and zucchini, a great big bag of beets w/o their tops, enormous cukes, basil that's going to seed, fresh full-sized onions still on their stalks, kale, curving purple Chinese eggplants, green peppers, early tomatoes, and cantaloupe melon!

To celebrate the return of salad days we ate: salad. Specifically Greek village salad, χωριάτικι.We've also laid in a quart of black olives and 2 lbs of Dodoni Feta to enjoy all July.

Greek village salad, χωριάτικη, is simple food, and the recipe is simple too.

Serves 2
1 green pepper, sliced
1/4 onion, sliced so that the onion falls apart
1-3 tomatoes, quartered if small or cut into eighths if larger
1 cucumber, sliced into tomato sized chunks
a handful of black or green olives
One thick slice of feta cheese on top, to be divided by the salad eaters
crumbled oregano
Olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, salt and pepper (optional)


Photo credit: Christos Proukakis flickr

We love this salad over here, and have some strong opinions about it. I've never been to a restaurant that actually serves Greek salad in the US.
Anything with Lettuce? Not χωριάτικη.
Crumbled up feta? Not χωριάτικη.
This salad really depends on the quality of its tomatoes, so we can only enjoy it during the summer time.
Want more protein? This isn't exactly Greek, but we often add a can of tuna. It's good, believe me! This salad makes the perfect summertime dinner with thick, crusty bread when you don't feel like cooking in the heat.

Firsts for the Bean

Okay, so this post doesn't have any recipes in it, or any cooking. I did sneak a picture of eating in though! June has rather escaped from us here in RVA, as we've all been getting used to lots of firsts. In order, H started preschool, E took her longest trip away from the family, went to her first faculty development seminar (it featured coffee and chocolate breaks you guys!), and sent out her first publication (a book review). We've also buried another first in the pictures, see if you can guess what it is!
E and H also tried the first lemon cake recipe, and it was a stinker. Peeeyouee, as H likes to say!


Off to PreSchool, all ready with her backpack, water sandals, and swimsuit on

While E was at her fancy seminar during the day, P and H had a great Father's Day at the Smithsonian Museums and Zoo.


See, I told you there would be eating!


H got to ride on the carousel and loved it.