We made eggplant parmigiana in LA!

Last week, Joey, Lauren and I went to LA to visit our dear friend, W. Hunter McClamrock. We drove to San Francisco and back, got picked up by a limo on New Years Eve, were forced to take a crazy detour through the mountains because of high winds and snow in "The Grapevine" (don't ask me California is crazy), rolled around in the fake grass at the Getty Center, ate delicious tacos and sushi and Umami (veggie) burgers, and generally had a lot of awesome adventures. On our last night, we wanted to make dinner and Hunter requested Joey's signature dish, eggplant parmigiana. Joey learned how to make this dish from his mama and has since perfected it on his own.

Most of us associate eggplant parm with the kind you get at most Italian restaurants: one cutlet of thickly breaded or deep fried eggplant drowning in sauce and mozzarella cheese. But the authentic and much more delicious way is to lightly fry thin slices of eggplant and then layer them like a lasagna with sauce and scattered chunks of mozzarella cheese.


But when it came time to start cooking, things got crazy. Let's just say Joey and Lauren had eaten a certain baked good. And let's just say the consumption of said baked good left them somewhat... indisposed (see the pic of Joey below--he was in no condition to cook.) So that left me to make the parm. I was a little intimidated, since it's always been Joey's thing and it's a pretty labor intensive dish, but I'd watched him enough times that I was pretty sure I knew all the steps.



First, of course, I made Mama Vallese's Vegetable Sauce.

Then we skinned three medium-sized eggplants and sliced them longways.

Then we prepared two bowls for the coating: one with flour, one with beaten eggs and parmesan.

Now here comes the labor-intensive part. Get a good inch of vegetable oil going on the pan, dip each slice of eggplant first in the flour, then the egg mixture, and fry those babies a few minutes on each side until the coating turns golden. You will have to do this in many, many batches. Unless you have an enormous pan. As you finish each batch, lay the fried slices on paper towels to absorb some of the oil.

When you're done with all that frying, the rest is easy. Get out your 10 x 15 baking dish and cover the bottom with sauce. Then place pieces of eggplant in one layer, minimizing any spaces between them. Then another THIN layer of more sauce. I would even call it more of a DRIZZLE than an actual layer. Otherwise the whole thing will get soupy and the eggplant won't stay as crisp. Then evenly scatter chunks of mozzarella. Then sprinkle some parm. Repeat until you've used all your eggplant, or until the baking dish can't hold anymore. On the top layer, scatter the mozz (not too much), and then throw on lotsa parmesan.

Cover the whole thing in aluminum foil, and bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake 10 minutes more. It should be all bubbly and brown and delicious looking.

And that's it! Joey ended up recovering in time to help me fry some of the eggplant, which it would have taken hours for me to do on my own. This dish is not difficult to make, but it's way easier if you have a few helpers. Also, you can halve this menu and make it in a smaller pan if you're not serving 10 people like we were. And I guess you don't HAVE to use Mama Vallese's Vegetable Sauce, but the quality of sauce can make or break this dish, so if you're going to buy one, spring for the fancy gourmet stuff.

Here is what our beautiful table looked like in Irma's beautiful apartment in Los Feliz ("The Happiness"--what a nice name for a hood!):


And here is all of us, so psyched to finally eat that parm!

We made quinoa gratin with spinach and sweet potato

I saw this recipe a couple years ago in The New York Times. Except it didn't have sweet potatoes--just a simple quinoa, spinach, gruyere casserole that would make a good side dish. And then last week, Joey and Lauren were coming over for dinner on a gross, rainy day, and I wanted to make something warm and comforting. I thought of this recipe, and decided to add sweet potatoes in order to make it more of a main dish. It worked beautifully! In fact, I think it's a format you can use to make a lot of different quinoa-based casseroles. Quinoa+cheese+vegetable+some kind of spice or herb or something else to flavor it. Like, can you imagine this baby with BUTTERNUT SQUASH? and KALE or CHARD instead of spinach? And maybe some GOAT CHEESE?? Or what about EGGPLANT and some MOZZERELLA?!?!? The possibilities are endless.

Quinoa Gratin with Spinach and Sweet Potatoes (adapted from Baked Quinoa with Spinach and Cheese)


Ingredients

1 6-ounce bag baby spinach

A few tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

4 or 5 sweet potatoes, skinned and sliced into medallions or half medallions, depending on the size

1 medium onion, chopped

2 plump garlic cloves, minced

4 cups cooked quinoa, (1 cup uncooked)

2 large eggs

3 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated (3/4 cup)

1 teaspoons nutmeg

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (1/4 cup)

Procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Oil a 2-quart gratin or baking dish.

2. Heat the oil in a medium frying pan or a wide saucepan over medium heat. Sautee the sweet potatoes slowly until tender enough that you can easily break the pieces with a wooden spoon. Remove from the pan and set aside.

3. Heat a little more olive oil ithe pan, and add the onion and cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and stir with the onion until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the spinach and season with salt and pepper. Cook just until wilted. Remove from the heat.

4. Beat the eggs in a large bowl and add 1/2 teaspoon salt. Stir in the quinoa, the onion and spinach mixture, the sweet potatoes the Gruyère, and the nutmeg. Add freshly ground pepper and stir the mixture together. Scrape into the gratin dish. Sprinkle the Parmesan over the top and drizzle on the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until nicely browned on top, about 25 minutes. Remove from the heat, allow to sit for about 5 minutes, and serve.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6

I made Caesar salad with grilled salmon! (well, Joey grilled the salmon.)

I made this to celebrate Alena's first official night as a resident of my apartment! I looked at a bunch of recipes and eventually improvised based on my research:

First I made some croutons. Cut some peasant bread into cubes and coated in olive oil, garlic powder, salt and paprika. Baked on 350 for 10 minutes.

Then I made the dressing, by putting the following things in a blender.

1 egg. That's right, a raw egg. You can coddle it by cooking for 45 seconds, but I decided coddling is for pansies. Raw eggs don't scare me.
4 anchovies, minced
1/2 cup grated parm
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 garlic clove
1 tsp sherry vinegar
1 generous tsp dijon mustard
1/3 cup olive oil
a little s&p.

Then I blended that shit.

Joey grilled the salmon on a griddle. It seemed pretty simple: just some olive oil, s&p, slapped it on the griddle a few minutes on each side.

Then we threw some chopped romaine in a bowl, along with the grilled salmon, which was cut into chunks and the croutons. Tossed it with the dressing. Garnished with some more parm. Boom.

P.S. Here is a video I made while I was cooking.


JUST KIDDING!!!! I found it on youtube and it made me laugh! Especially the music!!! Hahaha. But that is pretty much how you make a Caesar salad.

Deconstructed Puttanesca with Grape Tomatoes by S&J

This idea had several inspirations:
1. Lately I have been really into roasting grape tomatoes. It's so easy and I've been adding it to a lot of pasta and quinoa dishes.
2. Have you ever noticed that the Top Chef contestants' favorite thing to do is "decontruct" dishes? Like deconstructed lasagna becomes a couple pieces of flat pasta tossed on plate with some other stuff?
3. The other night I was at Joey's and we were deciding what to make for dinner. We were in the mood for pasta and thought of puttanesca, but worried it would be too heavy a meal to eat in 90 degree city heat.

Thus, the genesis of:
DECONSTRUCTED PUTTANESCA WITH ROASTED GRAPE TOMATOES!!!
a sarah and joey orig

Ingredients
a lot of grape tomatoes. We used about two and a half packages. It will look like a lot, but they cook down when you roast them.
1 cup pitted kalamata olives, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons capers (Joey thinks I am caper crazy, but I think you can never have enough...)
6 or 8 anchovy filets
4 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
red pepper
pecorino romano cheese
1 bunch basil, chopped

Roast grape tomatoes at 450 tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until they begin to burst and shrivel and brown a little. About 20 minutes. While that's happening, heat a generous amount of olive oil in a pan. Add the garlic, red pepper, anchovies, capers and olives. Cook for a couple minutes and then add the basil. Cook and for a couple minutes more. It will look like this:


When the tomatoes are ready, they will look like this:


Now just combine all of it with your pasta. We used cappelini--it goes well with a thin, twirlable pasta, but it's up to you.

Sprinkle with cheese and you're DONE. Won't take you more than half an hour for an impressive, delicious result.

We had a picnic!

This was that weekend that spring came to NYC all at once in a crazy explosion of 95 degree weather in the middle of April. We celebrated by throwing together a picnic in Fort Greene Park.

In my humble opinion, picnic food should be easy. Easy to make, easy to eat, easy to carry, easy to keep in the sun without spoling. BUT IT ALSO MUST BE DELICIOUS! Is it possible? you may be wondering.

Well the answer is yes. Just take a look at this spread.


Clock wise from top:

I made black bean salad (recipe follows).
Hill made AWESOME brownies.
Alena brought some fruit.
Billy brought a refreshing celery blue cheese salad.
Joey brought "Summer Pasta", which is basically tortelini with basil, cherry tomatoes, garlic and olive oil. He taught me how to make this when we were in grad school together and having almost nightly dinner-making/study dates. This is sooo easy to throw together--just throw all the ingredients besides the pasta in a bowl, let sit so the flavors infuse the olive oil, and then toss with the pasta. You don't have to use tortelini--bowties work well if you want something less heavy.

Here is the recipe for my black bean salad. It is inspired by something I found on Epicurious, but I can't find the original recipe, and I've tweaked it so much anyway that we can just say I invented it.

Ingredients
Salad:
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can corn, drained
1 can heart of palm, drained and sliced into medallions
1 diced tomato
1 green pepper, chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 avocado, sliced

Dressing:
1 clove garlic
Juice of 2 limes
Tb olive oil
tsp white vinegar
splash hot sauce if you want

E-Z:
Toss all the salad ingredients in a bowl. Then toss all the dressing ingredients into a smaller bowl and whisk together. Combine bowls. Toss that salad. Through some pretty avocado slices on top.

Done. Simple, refreshing, good. Look at how happy it made us:

I made joey's mama's sauce and it was the best sunday afternoon project EVER!!!

This is just a note to say that a couple Sundays ago, I made Joey's Mama's tomato sauce, and it was a very rewarding experience. Making sauce from scratch seems like such a labor intensive, exact science, but it is really not that hard, and any sauce you buy in a jar really does not compare. The only thing that is at all laborious is that you have to cook it a long time--i cooked mine for about three hours--but that's why it's a good Sunday activity. You get it on the stove, do some laundry, go to the gym, give it a stir once in a while. No big deal! And THEN you freeze what you don't use right then, which will be a lot. Here is a list of things I have made with this sauce:

-spinach ravioli in sauce
-angel hair pasta in sauce with sauteed eggplant and romano cheese
-ricotta filled whole wheat tortellini with chunks of roasted butternut, sauce.
-POLENTA PIZZA (this baby will have its own post.)

The only changes I made to Mama Vallese's sacred recipe is that I added some glugs of red wine (which I've seen Joey do when he makes it, so i figured it was ok), and sauteed some garlic with the vegetable mush before adding the tomatoes.

and i mushed those vegetables in a bowl with my trusty hand blender. i am telling you. you can do anything with that thing. it is the most universal kitchen appliance.

ok that's it. make this sauce this sunday. you won't be sorry. it will be really fulfilling.