December 22, 2010: Perfect Parmesan Patty

I’ve loved Eggplant Parmesan since I had my sister Ellen’s wonderful recipe at New Years, in high school. Her’s was a classic eggplant parmesan: breaded and fried eggplant patties smothered in sauce, ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses and it is soooo delicious, but every time I’ve made it this way I thought that it would so good to get rid of the mess and calories of frying. Most of the flavor comes from the eggplant, sauce and cheeses anyway, so, I’ve developed a way to BAKE the patties and get similar results.

Ingredients for Eggplant Patties: (preheat oven to 450°)

• 2 Medium Eggplants
• Fine Salt
• 2C. White Flour
• 4 Eggs
• 1C. Milk
• 6 C. Italian Bread Crumbs+2C. Panko

If you’ve made eggplant parmesan before, you know the drill: wash and slice eggplant in about 1/2″ slices. Rinse and sprinkle with salt all surface areas of eggplant slices  and let sit for about 20 minutes (this reduces the bitterness of the eggplant.) Rinse salt off. Have three bowls ready: in the first, white flour. In the second, beaten eggs and the milk to thin. In the last bowl, the bread crumb mixture. For each eggplant patty, dredge the moist eggplant in the flour, then into the egg/milk and finally into the bread crumbs. For all of these steps make sure to cover the whole patty.

Now BAKE the patties @450° for about 10 minutes per side (I use a cookie sheet with holes in it to allow more heat through, and put a piece of aluminum foil under to catch the crumbs.) I usually turn the broiler on to finish the browning as a last step (and watch the patties very closely, with the oven door open…the broiler will scorch the patties in NO time!) The baked patties should look like the ones above left. You most likely will have to bake two trays (at least) so this part takes time but in less time, less mess, and most important…less calories than if you fried them. Combine with your favorite sauce and cheeses and bake to get a delicious and guilt-free eggplant parmesan. This recipe makes eggplant enough make  13″ X 9″ X 2″ pan size parmesan.

November 08, 2010: Portobello-Radicchio Hors d’oeuvre

Here’s a unique and healthy hors d’oeuvre that’s pretty, pretty easy, doesn’t take a lot of time and is good for those serving vegetarians (at least those that are lacto-ovo vegetarians, for those pure vegetarians just omit cheese.)

Portobello mushrooms are the hero of the mushroom world. Some mushrooms have more flavor and some have more distinct flavors, but none beat the “beefyness” of the portobello. Portobello are really over sized cremini mushrooms. The little sister of portobello are great in a soup or an omlette, but for this dish the size of portobello works best. Even kids like portobello. A couple of weekends ago I was making chicken with a velouté sauce in bouchées and little Katie was fine helping me prepare them but she gave me fair warning that she would not try the portobello I was putting on top! Not only did we get her to try them, but she asked for more!

Radicchio is actually leaf chicory (sometimes called Italian Chicory), not a lettuce, per se, and as such can be bitter on its own, but tends to mellow a bit when roasted. The grapefruit-sized red and white head that we find in our markets is Radicchio di Chioggia.

Portobello-Radicchio Hors d’oeuvre

• 1 Head Radicchio
• 2 Portobello Mushrooms (more if needed; 2 medium mushrooms will make 6 pieces)
• Sliced (round) Provolone Cheese
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon
• About 1/4C. Olive Oil (virgin)
• 2 Tblsps. Red Wine
• Spices: About 1/4Teasp. of Salt, Pepper and Herb de Provence
• Wooden Toothpicks (1 per each hors d’oeuvre)

If you can find untrimmed portobello, that would be the best. They will have a thick stem that’s pretty dirty. Here’s a trick I learned at the restaurant: you actually don’t have to wash a portobello, in fact it’s better if you don’t. Simply remove the stem where it is dirty with a sharp knife (keep the stem for stock.) Now, flip the mushroom so that the gills are up. Grab the skin part of the edge of the mushroom and pull. You will remove a piece of the top of  the mushroom. Keep pulling like this until you have gone all the way around. You might have a piece of the skin still on the center of a big mushroom which you can remove with a sharp paring knife (I put all the skin in a baggie and then into the freezer for the next stock I make.) You now have a clean mushroom. Slice into 1/2-3/4″ pieces. Oil a grill pan and under medium high heat grill the mushroom slices on both sides and put on a paper towel. [I like the style of grill pan shown above, so I can get nice "tiger stripes" on the mushroom slices, but any grill pan will do. ]

If you are careful you will be able to pull 1/2 of a leaf of radicchio at a time. Cut each 1/2 leaf to get a 1/4 leaf. Cut provolone slices in half. You will see that the edges of the provolone line up with (and are a little smaller than) each piece of radicchio. Put provolone on top of radicchio leaf. Wrap the mushroom  and tack at a 20° in and down through hors d’oeuvre. Place each hors d’oeuvre back on grill pan and baste with juice of 1/2 lemon, 2 Tblsps. red wine, and 2 Tblsps. olive oil. Add spices. Grill under broiler until cheese is melted and/or radicchio starts to grill. Baste a little with the wine/lemon/oil. Remove with tongs to warmed plate. Serve immediately.

November 04, 2010: Broccoli-Raab and Pasta

Yesterday, after a fun day of baby-sitting Katie, I made Barbara, Nicole, and Katie dinner. I wanted to make an Italian meal, so I made:

“Pollo al Sale” (Chicken, sealed and roasted within a salt-dough crust. At the end of roasting, the dough is broken and discarded. The crust keeps the meat moist and tender while adding a slight salt taste to the meat.)

Sautéed Broccoli-Raab with farfalle pasta, black olives, garlic, red pepper.

The broccoli-raab dish is one of my standard dishes. It’s light, healthy, and combines the slightly bitter taste of broccoli-raab with sweetness of the sautéed garlic in olive oil with the heat of red pepper with the slight salt and cheese taste of Parmesan cheese. If you’ve never used broccoli-raab before, you will find it in most grocery produce sections today. It looks a little like if broccoli had gone to seed: thin stems with small broccoli-like florets at the top. This Italian veggie is too bitter to eat raw. Just slightly blanch and sauté with olive oil.

Sautéed Broccoli-Raab

• 1 Head Broccoli-Raab
• 1 Box of Farfalle (‘butterfly” or “bow-tie” pasta)
• 3 Cloves Garlic OR 1 Clove Elephant Garlic (chopped fine)
• 1/4-1/2 C.Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/2 Dried Red Pepper (cut into thin strips) OR 2 Red (hot) Peppers (chopped fine)
• 1/2 Can of Medium Black Olives (pitted and quartered)
• 1 C. Parmesan Cheese (more to taste)
• Spices: (1/4 Teasp. of each) Coarse Salt, Pepper, Oregano, Basil

Set about 4 Qts. water to boil in large pot. Add a dribble of olive oil and 1 Tblsp. coarse salt to water. Cut the last part of stems off broccoli-rabb off (save for stock) and wash broccoil-raab well and dry slightly. Chop into pieces. When water comes to boil, blanche broccoli-raab for about a minute and remove from water with a slotted spoon, keeping the water boiling. Add pasta to pot of water for about 10 minutes until “al dente”. While pasta cooks, add broccoli-raab, spices, garlic, red peppers and olive oil to large pot and sauté for the time that the pasta cooks. Add black olives at the very end of  sauté. When pasta is done, drain well, add all ingredients to a large bowl and toss with parmesan cheese. Serve.

October 29, 2010: Antipasto

My next door neighbor Scott had a birthday today, so as a present I asked him to suggest something that I could cook for him and his guests. He said the party’s concentration was on beverages but that he liked Italian food. That narrowed it down to “antipasto” which is Italian for the snacks one has “before the meal”. There are a plethora of these, but I settled on (from left to right) Left: small balls of mozzarella surrounded by a fresh basil leaf, dribbled with olive oil; Center: bruschetta (bread brushed with olive oil and spices, then toasted) with tomato, cannelli bean, garlic, olive oil, spices and topped with a dab of ricotta; Right: Balls of cantaloupe covered with prosciutto (thin Italian ham).