Eggplant Parmesan Pizza

Typically on weeknights, I will either see Sous Chef Brian for a moment between work and his class, or speak to him on the phone for a minute.   I've said before, I'd almost rather not have that moment, because there's a whole lot of, "I paid that bill," "Did you call the vet," "Don't forget it's trash night," "Have you seen my good pants?" being fired off in both directions, and there just isn't enough time.  So, to add stress to that conversation, I'll often ask him what he wants for dinner.

Worse than that, I'll ask him if he's "had a chance to think about dinner," and the answer is always, "no."  Of course not. Who would?  He's looking for his good pants, and I'm digging my heels in and making it clear that class or not, trash night is his problem.  So I asked the other day and he said, "Is lasagna out of the question?"


How dare he?  I mean, really?  It's a weeknight.


I don't know why lasagna has such a bad rap.  Really, if you already have sauce made, and like me, you don't boil your noodles, lasagna takes 15 minutes to prepare your veg, 5 minutes to layer, and then it's all oven time.  Lasagna is not such a time suck.  But it has that feel to it.  "I made a lasagna," is often received with oohs and aahs.  Really folks, it's pasta with veg, but you made it in the oven.  


Anyhow.  He actually said, "Is lasagna out of the question, and do we have eggplant?"  These aren't words that are commonly linked in our home.  I've never made or eaten lasagna with eggplant.  But OMG did eggplant lasagna sound good.  And I have a freezer full of diced eggplant.  This was going to be spectacular.  On a weeknight, no less.


I got my eggplant defrosting, realized I had no sauce so started making my quick-ish winter sauce, and turned on some music from my youth.  It was on.  On a weeknight. 


Then I opened the cabinet and saw that I had four (4) lasagna noodles.  It was pretty obvious, I keep them in a big glass jar.  Lasagna was out of the question.*


The pizza place by my office puts anything on pizza.  It's amazing to me that I can point at a slice and say, "What's that?" and they'll say, "Ranch" all matter-of-fact and slightly irked that I can't recognize the white sauce, and I'll be like, "Ranch and what?" And they'll just say, "Fried chicken."  Oh yeah, that goes on pizza.  Sorry I didn't recognize that traditional classic.  These are the same folks that make cheeseburger pizza, taco pizza, and french fry pizza.  One thing I've seen, but not had, is eggplant parmesan pizza.  I had a pizza dough in the freezer.  Luckily, it was Sous Chef Brian's late class, and I had defrost time.  

CSA 2011 - The Goods - Week 21

It's week 21, the first week of farmer's choice.  Meaning I'm not racing to select veg before all the good stuff is gone.  I like that.  I really thought I'd prefer selecting my own this year, but the mad dash for the good stuff during the work day, and I guess the lack of a challenge (what is that/can I eat it) made me miss good old fashioned mystery boxes of veg.  So this week I got that.   

Soft Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are four types of chocolate chip cookies:  Flat n' chewy, hard, soft, and icky.  Everyone has their cookie camp.  I make mine soft.  If you want to make them chewy, use the Tollhouse recipe.  Everyone else does.  It's a good cookie.  I'm all for it.  Also, other people like them hard.  I don't know what's wrong with those people.  And then some cookies are icky.  Like the hard "chocolate chip" cookies made of chalk dust that people get at Italian bakeries.  Ugh.


I was a Soft Batch kid, not a Chips Ahoy kid.  But I had some Soft Batch cookies a couple years back and there is some sort of acidic sweet chemical flavor that is no longer working for me. And they're dusty too.  I don't know what happened.


Either way, I've been working on a whole wheat recipe for a while.  I think whole wheat will only work with the thicker, softer cookies, because they're cakier to start with, and if you think too hard about it, muffin-ier.  So whole wheat works here.


Anyhow, I made you some cookies. 


I buy good chocolate chips, because I'm a spoiled girl.  I don't know, a couple years ago I had a [candy] bar and it was like wax and I asked myself what I was doing eating chocolate.  Sous Chef Brian had never been a chocolate fan, and I started buying "good" chocolate and all of a sudden he was all nomming on my secret stash, so I'm a convert, and I eat a lot less chocolate because I can afford a lot less chocolate.   So start with something you really like.  

Scalloped Potatoes with Kale and Sundried Tomatoes

I've had less time to spend in my kitchen lately, and it shows.  My fridge is still hooked up by extension cord, the eggs are still in the mini-fridge, and the dishes have lingered.  Not in the creepy, crusted-on food kind of way, it's more like there's an accumulation of plastic baggies to be washed out, and jars that need their labels removed for storage, and lunch bags that have really reached the end of their useful life without a good cleaning.  Just neglected kitchen and food related maintenance.  In the next two weeks I'll have even less time to do that, so I'll cook when I can, and show it to you when I can, and we'll be back on schedule soon enough, but I don't think I'm going to the grocery store before November. 


But we still eat.  I mentioned in my CSA post the other day that I had hasselback or accordion potatoes on my mind.   I guess it was just thin slices I was excited about, because a few nights ago I made scalloped potatoes.  Scalloped potatoes aren't something I make a lot of, but neither are potatoes in general.  I think I wrote about my unsubstantiated fear of them a few months back.  They just seemed so unnecessary, like that side of starch that was mandatory on our plates growing up.   


Several months ago, my friend Kristina shared a picture of her family's au gratin potatoes, and I was like "Whoa, must make," and she was all, "You sure? It's a pound of cheese," (Ok, I'm paraphrasing) and I was like, "Hell yes."  And I've been staring at that recipe since May and yeah, I'm never going to make it. 


But I don't know, something about potatoes that have been sliced super thin is appealing to me this week. So scalloped potatoes with sundried tomatoes and kale happened.   Why sundried tomatoes and kale?  Potatoes don't have a world of flavor on their own, so sundried tomatoes are my easy answer to a lot of flavor without adding anything terrible for us.  Kale, because I still had last week's farmshare kale on hand and it was withering and starting to scare the other produce. 


The first thing I did was steam up that kale.  

CSA 2011 - The Goods - Week 20

 

When I started posting my CSA shares this year, it was because last year my CSA haul was overwhelming.  Not only in quantity but in variety.  I thought I'd need your suggestions for how to use celeriac and salad turnips and unfamiliar squashes and purslane.  


That's happened a few times, but mostly, I get greens, onions and potatoes.  See above.  No onions this week, but you get the picture. 


The ordering window opens at noon, midweek, and without fail I'm in a meeting or on a call or something when the alert on my phone goes off.  By mid-afternoon when I select my produce, I get to see what I missed out on.   I think this one is set up for people without much going in during the day. 


So I continue posting up pictures of my fairly standard veg, because that's what I said I'd do, and I'd still love your suggestions - just less because I don't know how to use something or which parts are edible, and more because I need fresh ideas for the same old. 


Collards.  I make collards one way.  What else should I do with them?

Dill.  I never buy dill.  Some of it will probably make its way into a salad dressing, but other ideas are welcome. 

Cilantro.  Typically, cilantro says "Mexican" to me, but I'm ill equipped to make tacos or nachos or whatever this week.  I didn't go grocery shopping over the weekend and it's too late now, so we're eating what's on hand.  What else do I do with cilantro?

Apples and pears.  These are just going to go into my face.  Straight up. 

Kale.  All I do with kale is salad or chips.   Sauteed kale sounds boring, and it also sounds like a side dish, which means I'm stuck making a main dish too.  Other thoughts on kale?

Salad.  This will also go into my face, like the apples and pears.  And the good news is that last week's salad is still crisp, so I'm all stocked up.   Perfect for a week without grocery shopping. 

Four little potatoes.  I got all excited about making potatoes like this and then saw the size and shape of these.  I don't think that's going to work out.  I know potatoes are supposed to keep, so this shouldn't be urgent, but I don't know if they're uncured, or if it's an issue of them being shipped to me wet (ugh) but they don't last more than a week before they start to sprout, so it's always time to use up the potatoes.  If you look close you can see an eye on the bottom left guy already. 

This was my last week of CSA ordering.  The next two shares are "farmer's choice," so I am somewhat excited about getting a mystery box, and I have my hopes up that there'll be more variety.  We'll see.  Then we venture into the unknown territory of Winter Harvest.