Warning: This one's about food. So if you are bored by that, move on now. But not before reading this very important message: Don't Buy Benchcraft Furniture!
We had a most excellent meal last night. Eggplant gratin, green beans sauteed in butter, olive oil and garlic and cornbread with fresh corn kernels stirred in. For dessert: homemade peach ice cream with blueberries stirred into it.
The eggplant gratin was essentially ratatouille...but baked. The recipe is in this month's Cooking Light Magazine...so not posted on their website yet. Make the tomato sauce...I used all the tomatoes that arrived in my farm box on Tuesday...about 3 lbs. Skin and cut up the tomatoes, simmer them for about 20 minutes, puree in a food processor and then add them back to the pan after you've sweated some onion, carrot and celery in there. Add in some fresh sprigs of Thyme and Basil and a Bay Leaf and salt and let simmer for a few more minutes.
Meanwhile, peel eggplant, leaving a narrow strip of peel every inch or so(for show). Then slice into half-inch slices. Broil for 5 minutes on each side. Then you layer the eggplant and tomato sauce in a 2 quart shallow dish, with julienned basil leaves tossed onto each layer. Top the entire thing with fresh parmesan or pecorino romano, which was what I have at the moment. Back for 15 minutes covered at 375 and then for another 15 minutes uncovered.
Beans: clean and snap off the ends. Drop in large skillet and drizzle with olive oil. Drop in some pats of butter...basically as much as your conscience will allow. My conscience, bolstered by my daily dose of Zocor, will allow about 4-5 Tablespoons for this pound of green beans. Crush a couple cloves of garlic into fairly large pieces and drop in there. Slap the lid on and turn the heat to medium. Flip them around every once in a while while the eggplant cooks. If you want to brown them at the end, just take the lid off during the last 10 minutes. I cooked mine for the entire 30 minutes that the eggplant and cornbread was in the oven...just turning the heat up and down to let the beans cook but not get too soft. We like them a little snappy.
I made "Northern Corn Bread" from The New Joy of Cooking. I still can't wrap my mind around "Southern Corn Bread", which is sugarless. I tell the ladies at church that southern corn bread is just wrong. My entire family is from Iowa, the corn state you know. We of all people know how to prepare corn. With sugar. Corn and sugar go together. That's all. This batch was particularly good because I have buttermilk right now. I stirred in about a cup of fresh corn kernels.
But the ice cream...that was the real kicker! Farmer Sammy had given us a whole ton of little tiny peaches from the farm. They have a bumper crop this year. He said they were Georgia Whites but probably 3/4 of them were yellow. So I don't know what that was about. But they were excellent. No pesticides were used, obviously, so we decided better to cut them up for some recipe than have one of the kids try to just bite into one. At the first sign of a worm, both of them would swear off peaches for the rest of their lives. They are still skeptical about broccoli ever since the "critter incident" at the table last summer. Every time it is on the table, they say "does this broccoli have bugs in it?".
There is a recipe for the ice cream in this month's Cooking Light on the back page. No cooking. No eggs. Just take your peaches, peel and slice them and sprinkle sugar on. Let them sit for 30 minutes. Then pour over 2 cups of half-n-half and some vanilla and freeze.
Now, I'm going to do this one again next week because our ice cream tasted a little like suntan lotion smells...kind of like coconut. Tony and Mom decided that. The cause was the vanilla. I have Mexican vanilla right now and of course I also forgot that it's double-strength. So that special Mexican vanilla flavor just about overwhelmed the peaches. But since we had let it harden for a couple hours after freezing, the peach flavor did come back through. When we threw on handfuls of fresh blueberries from the farm, that really kicked things up. So next week, back to the other vanilla, half-strength, and if I don't get them from the farm, I'll buy the peaches from Springs Farm.
And if you don't live here, you should visit the Springs Farm website and order a case of peaches. I sent some to my sister Julia a little while ago. They were perfectly packed and perfectly ripe for the eating when they arrived. At only $35 a case(including shipping), it's a real deal, too. I think she said there 2 or 3 dozen in the box. If you put them in the fridge, especially in a plastic bag or a humidity-controlled container, they will last a week. A really nice couple packs and ships them, too. So it's a good thing!
8:28:24 AM 
|
