Lemon balm pesto orzo with carmelized mushrooms, green olives and eggplant

Wow, that's a mouthful.  I hadn't planned on serving all of this together, but since Steve brought home two medium-sized eggplants earlier this week, I figured I could skip the usual ratatouille/moussaka thing and just saute some thick slices as a side dish.  When it occurred to me that the eggplant would take up a lot of space on the plate, I decided on a more visually appealing presentation with the pasta served on a bed of eggplant and garnished with the mushrooms and stuffed olives.

The recipe was pretty much the same as here except that I used orzo, figuring that short pasta would be less awkward on a bed of something that needs cutting.  I also substituted lemon balm for the basil called for in traditional pesto because my lemon balm plant was in a greater need of thinning.  I thought at first that I had burned the mushrooms, but they still tasted good and were simply a little crispier than caramelized.  It was a fine line, heatwise, with the eggplant; on one hand I wanted it to cook through without it being too mushy, but on the other hand I didn't want to burn it.  Well, at first I thought I was burning it (and that it was just as well to hide it under all that pasta), but it really came out more like it would have on the grill.  All I used for it was a little olive oil in a nonstick pan and generous amounts of salt, pepper and Italian herb mix on each side.

It hit the spot: this morning I did my first track workout in ages - 800 meter repeats at the RNE track - and was able to meet or beat my goal time on all of them!  Hooray for pasta and hooray for eggplant!

Since my long weekend of work begins tonight, I probably won't post again before sometime next week.  Enjoy your weekend off, and I look forward to getting back in the kitchen (and telling you all about it) soon!

My very first homemade pizza!

Yep, I’m 35 and never made a pizza before Wednesday night.  While I’ve eaten plenty of it in my day (I did go to college, after all), I’ve never considered myself a good enough baker to get the dough right.  Luckily, I recently came across the Brokeass Gourmet’s pizza dough recipe, which really is as easy to make as she says (I used a mixing bowl and wooden spoon, nothing high-tech), and decided it was once again worth trying to achieve success with flour and active dry yeast. 

It was also time to take a bunch of big basil leaves off my plant before they all started turning brown and sloughing off to make room for the ones growing in behind them, so I can say that the sauce on my very first pizza was pesto rather than a regular red sauce.  A quick Google search turned up this traditional pesto recipe, which I followed to the letter except that I doubled the garlic to four cloves; two just didn’t seem like enough for the amount of basil I harvested.

With these two things made, it was just a question of rolling out a little less than half the pizza dough onto a 12-inch pizza pan (which Steve, dear that he is, went out and bought since we didn’t have one), slathering on about half of the pesto (about half a cup), covering it over with thinly sliced mozzarella and the toppings we had.  I didn't have any other ideas for the mushrooms we had in the fridge, so that’s what you see here.  Into the 400 degree oven it went for 20 minutes, and voilà! 

 

I'm not sure if it's because of the pizza pan being non-stick or not, but the bottom part of the crust actually started to brown after about 15 minutes; it was another five minutes before the top edges were brown enough to call the pizza done.  In any case, having a non-stick pan was very handy, since we also don't have a pizza cutter.  With the non-stick pan, it was easy just to slide the pizza off the pan and onto a cutting board for slicing with a regular serrated knife.

Since I ran 9 miles Wednesday morning, I still had a few calories to replace and helped myself to three slices; Steve had two.  The leftovers were just as good for lunch on Thursday after about 40 seconds in the microwave per slice.

So, tonight I made a spinach and feta pizza - just like the one at the Hunter-Gatherer in Columbia - that turned out just as well!  This time I did whip together a quick tomato sauce: eight-ounce can of tomato sauce, half a tablespoon of dried Italian herbs, two cloves of garlic and one pinch each of salt and pepper.  I eyeballed the chopped spinach and crumbled feta, but I pretty much covered the mozzarella before putting it in the oven.  Same as Wednesday: 400 degrees, 20 minutes.

It went in the oven around 7:00, and all of it was eaten before Jeopardy was over.

Pizza, Marian style – homemade sauce and dough.  Who knows?  Maybe when some of the veggies in the backyard have ripened, they’ll also make an appearance atop one of my pizzas!  Tomato slices, mmmm….

Emerald Isle Pasta with Parsley Pesto

I just decided to steal this name from a pasta dish they serve at The Puddlin' Duck.  It's kinda the same based on the menu description, but not exactly the same.  Their menu is all about meat and we don't usually eat there, but if we do, this is probably the only thing on their menu I could order besides some mozzarella sticks or fries.  I'd also say the macaroni and cheese, but they use egg in theirs.  Boo.

So, I had a big bunch of parsley that I bought late last week and still hadn't used by last night, and I was worried that if I didn't do something with it right away, it would all end up in the compost bin.  And organic parsley makes for some needlessly expensive compost.  Without having enough of an appetite to stay in the kitchen and make a meal out of it, I whipped up some pesto.  It went something like this:

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley (about two cups), coarsely chopped
1/2 cup pine nuts
juice of one lemon plus some of the pulp
8 gloves minced garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup olive oil

Puree all ingredients in a blender or food processor. 

That's it!  Left it in the fridge overnight, and tonight I added it to some cooked pasta, gave it a good stir and shaved some Romano cheese over the top.  I was also pleased to discover that it firmed up in the fridge, so now it also makes a tasty, garlicky, parsley-y chip dip.  Steve wasn't into the idea, but I'm sure I'll be snacking on it sometime this weekend.

In any case, this was a simple but great way to get ready for tomorrow morning's run. 

Until next time...