Posts Tagged tomatoes
Spinach and Tomato Eggplant Steak with Dill Rice
Posted by Van Santos in Main Course, Vegetarian Entree on December 15th, 2009
With some leftover Feta cheese sitting in the Fridge I thought I would do a Mediterranean-esque dish. Here is something I have to admit – I’ve never consumed eggplant in my 32 years on this planet.
Scary, huh?
That said, I truly had no clue as to what I was doing, I just went with what seemed right.
I used:
1 package of frozen spinach
2 small vine ripened tomatoes
1 tablespoon minced garlic
½ cup bread crumbs
¼ cup feta cheese
fresh parsley
fresh oregano
1 nice sized eggplant
olive oil
1) Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees
2) Cut your eggplant into four steak, roughly one inch thick. At olive oil to a frying pan and brown the egg plant on each side for one to two minutes. Set aside eggplant steaks
3) Defrost your spinach, chop your tomatoes. Using the same frying pan add additional olive oil, sauté the spinach, tomatoes, minced garlic, parsley and oregano. Use the amount of parsley and oregano you see fit. Also, salt and pepper to your taste
4) Place your eggplant onto a foiled cookie sheet, spoon on your spinach mixture.
5) Mix the Feta cheese and bread crumbs together, sprinkle over the spinach mix on the eggplant and bake for 25 minutes
While the eggplant was in the oven I quickly whipped up some dill rice.
2 cups of white rice
2 cups of chicken broth
1 cup of freshly cut dill
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
This is quite easy to do, just…
1) Bring the chicken broth to a boil
2) Add rice and lemon juice, stir
3) Add dill, stir
4) Cover and cook over low heat until rice is at your desired tenderness
Eggplant steak goodness!
OH WOW. This is the second vegetarian dish in two weeks that has really, really impressed me. The eggplant didn’t have the flavor or texture I expected, and the “stuff” complimented the aftertaste of the fruit. And the dill rice tied everything together… I mean, come on, it’s dill rice!
Also, the spinach/tomato mix could be used for so many things…Actually, it could seem some variant of this being for a pita or chip “dip”… maybe even for stuffed mushrooms.
In the end I capped the entire meal off with a slice of the Cinnamon and Brown Sugar cake and I was in heaven.
All and all a good turnout for a “let’s throw something together” dish.
Summer gazpacho — with that which happened to be in my kitchen/garden
Posted by monicajane in soup on August 31st, 2009
A friend of mine today asked me if I had a recipe for Gazpacho. I didn’t. I never have recipes. I never make the same thing exactly the same twice. Absolutely never.
What I did think when she told me she wanted a recipe was, “I haven’t made Gazpacho in years and I have all that I need to make it either in the kitchen or in the garden right now.”
Being that there is no time like the present I hastened to make the soup. My friend is hopefully on her way here to have some with me. It’s chilling right now, but I’ve tasted it and it’s yummy.
Ingredients:
4 ripe tomatoes diced in small pieces (I used 3 yellow and one red as that is what I had in the garden)
1/2 medium red onion diced very fine
2 jalepenos diced in tiny pieces (one was red and one was green — also from the garden — red jalapenos tend to be a bit hotter as they are riper)
2 red peppers diced (I cheated with the peppers as we don’t have them in the garden this year. I used two canned roasted red peppers)
1 large cucumber diced into small bits (I keep the skin as they are organic and have no wax)
1 – 14 oz can of tomato sauce
4 cloves of garlic finely diced
large bunch of parsley also cut finely
Salt to taste
2 tbls red wine vinegar
2 tbls balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
This is an easy dish as you just toss everything into a bowl and mix it up well, taste it to make sure it’s got the right balance of stuff. You can adjust everything to taste.
After it’s all put together put in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to chill and also let the flavors blend more. It’s best cold.
More spoils from the garden
Posted by monicajane in Side Dishes on August 15th, 2009
Not a whole lot of cooking happening around here. At least not of the variety I find inspiring to share.
I do think our tomatoes are quite inspiring though. Here is a picture of a tomato salad. Very simple ingredients to maximize the fresh tomato taste.
Tomato
Fresh basil
garlic
salt
olive oil
That’s it! I find tomatoes taste best without vinegar as they are already a bit acidic.
My husband made this one following my directions. I would personally cut up the basil a bit smaller…but this was mighty yummy.
