Eggplant Tomato Pie

This dish was certainly pushing the limits in our kitchen! DH is not the grandest fan of eggplant, but he's learning to appreciate it. The finished product - very, very good. The topping includes bread crumbs, flax seed (because we were out of wheat germ), and a little Parmesan cheese - can't be too bad right? The recipe is from my old favorite - Joy of Gardening Cookbook.

Recipe for the eggplant filling:
In a large saute pan, melt 2 Tbs. butter. Saute 3 Tbs. diced onion, 2 crushed garlic cloves, and 1 C each of chopped red and green bell peppers. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add 5 C peeled, diced eggplant, and 1/4 C water. Cover pan and cook 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 8 oz. of cubed cream cheese, cooking until it melts through the eggplant mixture. Next add 1/4 C grated Parmesan, 1 Tbs. lemon juice, and 2 Tbs. minced fresh basil, or 1 tsp. dried basil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Recipe for the topping:
Mix together 1/2 C wheat germ, 1/4 C bread crumbs, 3 Tbs. melted butter, and 3 Tbs. grated Parmesan.

Assembly of the pie:
Into one unbaked pie shell, layer half the eggplant mixture, then cover with sliced fresh tomatoes, then the last half of the eggplant mixture. Sprinkle on the topping and bake at 350 degrees for about 60 minutes, or until the pie is firm. Loosely cover the pie with foil if the topping begins to get too brown.

Below is a photo of the pie in progress. It's a picture of the step where you layer tomato slices in the middle of the eggplant filling layers - I never cease to be thrilled at the color of our tomatoes!

Salsa Baked Burritos

We canned a good amount of salsa this year and one of my favorite things to do with it is make smothered burritos. It's much tastier than using tomato sauce. These were made with beef that was braised with onions, mushrooms, garlic, and tomatoes. Then it was rolled up into whole wheat tortillas, covered with our salsa and baked. I topped it with cheese near the end and then served it on lettuce with more salsa and sour cream. This could easily have been spiced up with any kind of peppers in the filling too. My mantra once again, make it your own!

Garden Pizza

Digging into the freezer for more garden goodies again! I made a simple pizza sauce by combining some of our frozen roasted tomatoes, a portion of frozen pesto, and a little dash of balsamic vinegar to give it a boost. Summer tomatoes and basil in November just about makes you forget how much work it took to get those tomatoes and basil in the freezer in the first place!
I use a homemade pizza dough - recipe below - tossed into my 11-year-old Zojirushi bread maker on the dough setting - easy stuff. My recipe makes enough for two pizzas and the second half goes into the freezer to save for another quick meal - either pizza or calzones, or even bread sticks. The first picture here, is of the raw dough with only the wonderful sauce so far, and it's sitting on my well worn baking stone from Pampered Chef, which is nice and dark now and missing one corner - but it still works great!

The toppings for this pizza were organic Italian turkey sausage, red and yellow pepper slices, red onion, and mozzarella cheese. Parmesan cheese is always the final touch when it comes out of the oven.

Mmmm...finished product. Fast food at it's best.

Whole Wheat Pizza dough for the bread machine:
2C warm water, 2 tsp. honey, 1 Tbs. olive oil, 1 tsp. salt, 4 C whole wheat pastry flour, 6 tsp. vital wheat gluten/dough conditioner (optional), 3 tsp. yeast. Add these in the order that your bread machine directs. I put mine on the dough setting and that's it. I always watch to make sure the dough is of the correct consistency, and then add a little more water or a little more flour if needed. It shouldn't be too sticky or too rock hard. BTW, you can easily add Italian seasoning, garlic, or whatever else you like.

Roasted Tomato Bruschetta

On the main blog is a post about the way that we preserve a lot of our homegrown tomatoes, which is roasting them. Here's one of the savory appetizer recipes I made using some of these preserved beauties. The roasted tomato spread was served on homemade crostini - oh the goodness...

I started with a defrosted batch of the roasted tomatoes. Each bag of tomatoes that we froze was around two cups. I added approximately 1 Tbs. of balsamic vinegar, two crushed cloves of garlic, 1/4 C of chopped fresh basil leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. I didn't add any olive oil since these were roasted in olive oil. If you were doing this spread with a can of tomatoes instead, you would drain it and add some olive oil. The inspiration for this came from Susan Branch's book - Autumn. I made the crostini by simply slicing a loaf of Parmesan baguette, lightly coating it with olive oil on both sides and baking it at 425 until it was just browned - turn it over at some point to get both sides crusty. BTW, DH added olives to this spread and used it to top poached salmon. Equally wonderful!

Roasted Tomato Sauce and Grilled Chicken with Roasted Tomato and Olive Sauce

We tried a very new idea to us - roasting fresh tomatoes to make a flavor concentrated sauce. I thought we might try roasting a lot of tomatoes at once and freezing it in batches for things like pizza, spaghetti, and Mexican dishes this winter. It worked best to slice them thin and to squeeze the seeds out as well. I always feel like I'm murdering the poor tomato and wasting something that's tasty, but I know that the wet pulpy part is not always so useful. Spray the pans well with a high temperature canola oil spray, drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkled on salt and pepper and put them in a 425 degree oven. They're just a little sticky to the touch when they're done. It took about 40 minutes altogether for this batch. They turned out just how we wanted them. The flavor is so intensified when you roast them! Here are shots taken before roasting and after roasting.



Our first use of these wonderful tomatoes was topping some grilled chicken. We added olives, sauteed shallots and fresh basil to some of the roasted tomatoes, then spooned it over a grilled chicken breast sitting on top of a slice of toasted French bread. The bread soaked up all the lovely juices - the whole thing was fabulous!