Great Expectations - Chopped-No-More Eggplant

I am expecting!!  Ha ha, no, not at my age (not at any age) - I am expecting a UPS delivery.  Even better, I am expecting a book, a real book with a cover and real paper pages.  Which can only mean one thing:  I am expecting a cookbook!

I got bitten by the Kindle bug years ago, and almost never buy real paper books anymore, but when it comes to cookbooks and knitting books, I remain a traditionalist.  Never mind that I already have hundreds of cookbooks; the collection still grows, albeit a lot slower than it did 20 years ago.

My latest acquisitions are Ina Garten's Make It Ahead which I found at BJs, and Emeril's Cooking With Power,  which I ordered from Amazon and awaited the delivery with much glee.  First of all, I adore Emeril Lagasse.  He's the best in the business, the man who made Food Network what it is (ruler of the airwaves) and a funny and fabulous teacher.  I learned so much about cooking from watching him 5 nights a week, every week, back when Food Network was more than a 24 hour game show.  I have most  of his cookbooks and I swear by his crawfish étouffée recipe even though there's no roux in it.

This book contains about 100 recipes which are made in either the crockpot, multi cooker (that was a new one for me) pressure cooker, and deep fryer.  I've already read through it twice (Yes, I read cookbooks.  So do a lot of people) and have a bunch of recipes I have to try.  Linguine with clam sauce.  Shrimp and lima beans.  Crawfish étouffée (this one has a roux). Stuffed calamari in a smoky tomato sauce.  Jerk chicken with rice and peas (but without 8 of the 9 Scotch bonnet peppers called for in the recipe).  And that's just for the crockpot.

After doing a little research, I learned that a multi cooker is a rice cooker with a split personality; an appliance that can't decide if it is a rice cooker, a steamer, a slow cooker, or an electric frying pan.  After a little more hand's on research at Walmart, I decided there is little difference between my rice cooker/steamer, and a multi cooker, certainly not enough to justify the purchase of yet another electric appliance.  I am pretty confident I can prepare the vast majority of Emeril's multi cooker recipes in my spiffy rice cooker, like the seafood soup with coconut milk and tamarind.

Successful delivery!

Okay, I really didn't need another crockpot cookbook since I have nine others.  And this recipe did not come from any of them.  It came from my grandmother, who never owned a crockpot in her life.  Actually, this recipe is a joint effort between me  my wonderful cousin, Cary Altschuler.  He threw in the food processor while I threw in the crockpot.  Besides the hardware, you will need:

1 eggplant
1 medium onion, chopped
olive oil (or canola or corn oil)
Kosher salt and black pepper

Coat the inside of the crockpot with some no-stick spray.  With a sharp, thin knife, pierce the eggplant in a few spots on all sides, and then place the eggplant into the crockpot.  Add about a half cup of water; cover and cook on High for three hours.  Turn the eggplant at the end of each hour.  When it is done, it will be soft to the touch and look like has collapsed.  Using tongs, carefully remove it to a baking dish.

Cut the eggplant in half, and remove the skin.  It should peel off fairly easily.  Break the eggplant up just a bit, and along with all of the juices in the pan, place it into a food processor bowl fitted with the chopping blade.  Add the onion.

With the processor running, pour a thin stream of oil through the feed tube until the eggplant-onion mixture holds together.  Try not to overprocess.  Remove to a small bowl and add salt and pepper to taste.  Refrigerate overnight.

This looks nothing like my grandmother's chopped eggplant, by the way.  She chopped hers, noisily and laboriously, in an old fashioned wooden bowl, using a double bladed hand chopper.  The physical work involved was considerable, which may account for why she only made it once a year.  Her finished dish looked somewhat like a relish, while this version is more like a dip or spread.

Taste-wise, this version is lighter and a lot less oniony.  She used two medium onions, and although she tried to get the milder Bermuda variety, most of the time those onions were extremely pungent and sharp to the taste.  And wonderfully odiferous, which is how Uncle Red was able to track it across three counties.  I used a sweet onion, or part of one equivalent to a regular medium onion, and it was very mild.  But wait ...

Allowing the eggplant to sit overnight is critical.  First of all,  the dish solidifies, making it both spoonable, dippable (is that even a word?) and spreadable.  Second, and most importantly, the flavors really come together and bloom during their restful evening, so when you taste this the next day, the onion will be much sharper on your senses, even if you used a sweet, mild onion as I did.  I remember my grandmother saying that this dish took a lot of salt, but I would recommend you wait until the next day to add salt.

This is good on toasted bagels or Wheat Thin crackers or matzo.  It would probably work really well as part of a Jewish or Mediterranean appetizer and salad table.  I suppose it is an acquired taste, but it was one I acquired at a very young age. So good, really.

You Must Remember This ... A List is Just a List ...

It's a toss-up as to which Humphrey Bogart film is my favorite:  The Maltese Falcon, or Casablanca.  Both of them have such great stand-alone lines.  It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

I have drafted my menu for Thanksgiving dinner, and it is, for me anyway, very simple.  No turducken - I surrender, for now at least.  One appetizer, one protein, one vegetable and one dessert.  Indeed I am restraining myself, but nobody will be going hungry.

The First List

Deviled eggs with a shrimp garnish
Spritely biscuits with honey butter
Small layered salad
Maple glazed turkey
Sausage and chestnut stuffing
Sweet potato "pie"
Broccoli spears in creamy garlic sauce (crockpot)
Cranberry mold
Staten Island peach cobbler

Everything is subject to change based on availability of ingredients and just how lively I am feeling.

And of course, I will gladly share all my recipes with you.  I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

A Turducken Before Dying

Holiday Headlines:  Taxonomists try to classify turducken - with the help of an earworm:

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater

(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater)

A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater

Sure looks strange to me (One eye?)

That's too weird, even for me.  How about Frankenbird?

Why now am I obsessing over the Ultimate Big Bird Dish, a whole turkey stuffed with a whole duck, stuffed with a whole chicken?  That's right, it is finally time to plan out my menu for Thanksgiving.  I start by making a list, but then I start almost everything in my life by making a list.  List-making is a family trait, and a lot more positive one than my proudly unaltered nose or that clinical depression thing that's been stalking me my whole life.  My grandmother always had a pile of shopping lists and notes to herself on the corner of  the kitchen counter.  Without any conscious forethought, I started doing the same thing once I was living in my own place with my own kitchen.  I should not have been surprised then, the year I went to spend Thanksgiving with my Uncle Marty (my grandmother's son and my mother's older brother) and Aunt Helen at their home in Cape Coral, Florida, that he also had a neat stack of lists and notes to himself on the corner of his kitchen counter.  

I consider list-making to be a useful obsession.  I make lists at work, on legal pads, of course,  and stack them on the right-hand corner of my desk.  Few things feel as good as checking a task off those lists, which include drafting petitions, writing up orders after trial, completing online training, and trial prep.  My home lists are much more pedestrian, including things like cheesy puffs, tomatoes, and kosher salt.  I also make cooking lists, based on the ingredients I have hauled home from Publix and BJs or for a planned menu for potluck, or for a holiday.  

Those holiday dinners happen a lot less frequently these days.  Family members scatter, develop impenetrable grudges, or pass on.  With all that being said, I am preparing Thanksgiving dinner this year for a party of five, and that means lists, lots of them.  What to make, what to buy, when to buy, preparation schedule.  I love this kind of stuff.

So the first item on my list is turkey, right?  Actually no, it's deviled eggs.  Then the salad, the bread, and finally, the bird.  So now I add the turkey to the list, right?  No, not yet.  Not this year.  This year I am going to find the Holy Grail and serve it for Thanksgiving dinner - TURDUCKEN.

Turducken is a made-up word, like the winter holiday of Hanukwanzamas, to describe something that doesn't really exist in nature.  It is a mostly boneless turkey that has been stuffed with a duck which has been stuffed with a chicken.  There are layers of richly-flavored stuffing between the different birds.  This behemoth is roasted in the oven for 12 or 20 hours, and when carved, will feed half the population of Omaha, Nebraska.  Still only two drumsticks, though.  Bummer.

I not only want to serve turducken, I want to prepare it myself.  Which creates a couple of huge logistical problems, the biggest one being that once again, I waited too long to properly plan this.  Another problem is that I can bone a chicken breast but not much beyond that.

I will cook a turducken before I die.

Now I did come across a recipe for a totally boneless turducken which relies on the breast of each bird to make a nice roulade which is then wrapped in bacon.  This sounds entirely manageable, except for one small problem - duck breast has disappeared entirely from the refrigerator cases at BJs.  This situation has persisted for several years and has really put a crimp in my cooking, as I have a number of really awesome recipes using duck breast.  So I would have to order the duck online, at ridiculously inflated prices and then, to add insult to injury, pay UPS or USPS a usurous sum of money to ship the darn thing.

And there stands the conundrum.  Maybe I'll try it for Hanukwanzamas after floating a bank loan.  Or maybe I will learn how to debone a turkey before next Thanksgiving, because whole duck is still available at the local supermarket.

A girl can dream, can't she?

That does it ...

... I am buying a new crockpot.  Or so I told myself this past Saturday, right after court, not one minute later.  A smaller one, about 4 quarts.  I was down to one crockpot for the first time in many years.  Old Faithful died the other day.  I know, I didn't mention it.  But he was almost 40 years old, which in crockpot years is about 280 ... or is that dogs?  Anyway, I was heading out for weekend court (don't ask because I can't tell) and on the way back I stopped at a really cheesy Walmart for a new crockpot ...

... and now I am the proud owner of a brand-new, 4 quart crockpot to replace Old Faithful.  I am also resolved never to go back to the particular Walmart.

Very sleek, right?  All black, very classy like a good cocktail dress, and most importantly, a removable stoneware crock.  And cheap, did I mention cheap?  I think I paid more for it the first time, in 1975.  So now I can go ahead and cook that cute little spaghetti squash, but before that, I am going to bake an eggplant.  In the crockpot.  Forget the parm (I am utterly opposed to frying anything), this eggplant is going to get the Brooklyn Jewish treatment.  This is the eggplant dish for which my Uncle Red would take a bus, the subway, the Long Island Railroad, and a taxi.  Apparently he could sniff when my grandmother had a batch ready.  Since he lived in Brooklyn and we lived in the Five Towns on Long Island, believing that might take a leap of faith, at least until you got a good look at his nose. Trust me, he could smell that eggplant dish.

Until next time ...

It's Not Easy Being Green - Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Maple Vinaigrette

I love vegetables, especially if they are green.  Sure, I have a warm relationship with carrots and yellow squash and parsnips; red, yellow and orange bell peppers tickle my taste buds, and of course cauliflower makes me smile. Lately I've even made peace with beets, but at the end of the day, it's the green stuff that I like to cook and eat.  High up on that list is the cute little Brussel sprout.  No, seriously. Brussel sprouts are cruciferous vegetables and those, my friends, are good for you and even if they weren't I would love 'em.  If I prepared them, George Bush the Elder would have eaten his broccoli and he would have liked it.  What is corned beef without cabbage?  Choucroute garnie without sauerkraut?  Cheese sauce without cauliflower?

Brussel sprouts are awesome.  They look like tiny cabbages and they taste even better.  I will often serve them with corned beef instead of cabbage, along with boiled new potatoes of roughly the same size as the sprouts.  We always had them steamed or boiled, with a little salt and butter, but the new, better way to cook them, at least according to the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, is to roast them in the oven.  Roasting vegetables enhances the natural flavors in a different way than boiling.  Natural sugars are caramelized, and marry well with the salt that is usually added before cooking.

I decided to try combining roasted Brussel sprouts with a maple vinaigrette that was part of a recipe for boiled Brussel sprouts. Threw those random numbers in the air and came up with a winner, at least according to Robert, who did declare "don't lose that recipe!"  As if I would:

1 pound fresh Brussel sprouts
2 tablespoons olive oil
kosher salt
ground black pepper

For the vinaigrette:
4 tablespoons sherry vinegar
4 tablespoons maple syrup (not top grade)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons walnut oil
freshly ground nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Trim the root end of the sprouts, and pull off any yellowed leaves.  Place the sprouts in an aluminum baking dish (or a rimmed baking sheet).  Pour on the olive oil, and sprinkle with the salt and pepper.  Shake the pan gently. back and forth, so that the sprouts are evenly coated with oil and seasoning.  Place in the oven for 35 minutes, until the Brussel sprouts are light brown on the outside and tender on the inside.  Shake the pan occasionally while roasting.

While the sprouts are roasting, whisk the vinaigrette ingredients together.

Carefully move the hot Brussel sprouts to a nice serving bowl, and pour all or most of the vinaigrette over.  Serve immediately.  Leftovers can be served chilled from the refrigerator, or at room temperature, or even gently reheated.