Eggplant Pizza by Jill Piers

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to announce that this latest post is from a guest blogger - my long time pal Jill Bradbury Piers! Jill made this amazing Eggplant Pizza the other day and when I saw the photo, I had to invite her to guest blog. She's funny too so I knew she'd be a good writer for the blog. Without further delay, here she is!

Guest Blogger - Jill Piers

So, I've known Dvorah and her dear brother Jonathan (aka Lionel) for about (yikes) 35 years now.....we met out of the womb.  Although Dvorah and I have only really seen each other once since about 1988....we've managed to reconnect by good old Facebook.  It is here where our latest chapter begins.  Last week, Dvorah announced that she was going to give up sugar for one month.  I'm thinking, "That sounds doable....I'm in!!"  I should also note, she also said she's not going to buy anything new for one month as well....(NOT in!).

So we start to chat and she shared with me a lovely bread recipe (http://richlerrecipes.blogspot.com/2013/06/meretes-danish-rye-bread-from-susan.html), as well as a recipe for granola (which I've yet to try), homemade peanut butter (http://richlerrecipes.blogspot.com/2014/05/homemade-peanut-butter.html)....delish....and on it goes.  

Then my son asked me to make a homemade pizza for Friday night supper.  No problem....for him and hubby....but what the heck am I going to eat???  Inspiration hits me!  Eggplant Pizza!!  What could be easier?  That will be just like eating pizza...but better.   

Truthfully?  Wasn't bad at all. Even better the day after. I shared a pic of this glorious new recipe with Dvorah and she asked me to be a guest blogger.  So here goes.....

Ingredients:

1 eggplant (I chose one that was relatively the same width from top to bottom)

2 vine-ripened tomatoes

8-10 fresh basil leaves

1 cup (approx) grated cheese (choose what you like, I used Monterey Jack)

1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F

Slice the eggplant in 1/3 inch slices.  Do the same for the tomatoes.  

Lay the eggplant on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  

Lay a slice of tomato on top of each eggplant slice.  

Layer all of the basil and roll tightly (like I cigar...I guess)....slice with a sharp knife into what is called a chiffonade (thin slices)....(for some reason, my son, John does not like that word...). 

Sprinkle the chiffonade of basil over each eggplant/tomato layer.  Then place some of each cheese onto each piece of layered eggplant, tomato and basil.  

Bake in the oven for about 20 mins until the cheese is bubbling and the eggplant is tender.

Enjoy!!

Thanks to Dvorah for inviting me to be a guest blogger.....!!!! This has been fun!!!

Black Bean Soup Inspired by Simon

I have posted a recipe for black bean soup before (http://www.richlerrecipes.blogspot.ca/2013/02/black-bean-chick-pea-soup-with-sour.html) but it is a bit different from this recipe. This recipe is smokier, spicier, and a bit richer in my opinion. Both are delicious. The inspiration for this soup came from my brother-in-law, Simon.

Simon, his lovely wife, and my beautiful niece live out of town so we don’t get to spend enough time with them. Whenever we visit them in their quaint little town, brother-in-law pulls out all the stops to make us delicious eats. One of his specialties is soup (he is the King’s brother after all), and my very favourite soup that he makes is black bean.

The problem with Simon, like many actual chefs, is that he doesn't write down his recipes. So every time he makes this soup it is slightly different - but it is always ridiculously delicious. Two visits ago, as he was making the soup, I hovered around the kitchen and wrote down a list of ingredients. I was not able to write down any amounts because he was halfway through the process when we arrived - but I have made some educated guesses for this recipe.

This weekend my cousin Emilie was visiting from Montreal (and before you ask, yes, she brought us 6 dozen Fairmont bagels and tzatiki from Arahova and she is welcome back any time). For her first night here we decided to make tacos because we are all big fans. We made the black bean tacos that are on this blog (http://www.richlerrecipes.blogspot.ca/2012/05/cinco-de-mayo-black-bean-tacos.html) and they were amazing.

Saturday night the plan was to have Indian food (also delicious, recipes to follow later for Chettinad Chicken Curry and Mulligatawny Soup) and then Sunday was going to be leftover day. In the spirit of leftovers, and reinvention, I decided to turn the black bean taco medley into this soup. It was a good decision.

For this list of ingredients, I am going to pretend that we are starting from scratch (but now you know the secret - make tacos one day and turn them into soup the next).

Black Bean Soup

2 - 3 tbsp grapeseed oil (or an oil that can be heated to a high temp, not olive oil)

1 medium to large sweet onion, diced

1 shallot, diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 stalks celery, diced

2 medium carrots, diced

1/2 large red pepper, sliced

1/2 large orange pepper, sliced

1 small zucchini, sliced

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed (14 oz each, or you can soak dry black beans if you prefer)

1 can diced tomatoes (28 oz, or fresh tomatoes if you prefer)

2 cups+ water or vegetable broth

1 tsp dried thyme

2 tsp dried epazote

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp smoked paprika (or a touch more if you like)

salt and pepper

1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

2 tsp sambal olek (thai hot sauce)

To serve:

avocado, chopped into biggish chunks, or a few spoonfuls of guacamole

limes -juice and zest, at least one for in the soup, and some wedges 

chopped fresh cilantro

sour cream (optional)

cheddar cheese, grated (optional)

If you have these ingredients on hand, you can add some to the pot if you want to:

tomatillos

oregano

jalapeño (instead of the sambal olek)

rice (to thicken the soup)

yellow or green pepper

kidney beans (or other bean)

Method

Start by heating the oil in a heavy soup pot. Sauté the onions for about 4 minutes on medium heat. Add the garlic and shallot and sauté for another minute, then add the celery and carrots and continue to cook for about 3 minutes. 

Then add the peppers and zucchini and all of the dried herbs (thyme, epazote, chilli, cumin, smoked paprika, salt, pepper). 

After about 3 minutes, add the beans. Stir for a minute and then add the tomatoes and broth or water, the sambal olek, 1/3 cup fresh cilantro, and the lime zest from 1 lime.

Bring to a boil and then simmer on low for about 1/2 hour or so. You don't want to overcook the veggies as they will lose flavour.

Remove from the heat and use a ladle to remove about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of the mixture. Set aside.

Puree the remaining soup using a hand blender. Once it is smooth and to your liking, squeeze in the juice of 1 - 2 limes. If you need to add more water at this point, go ahead. Make the consistency what you like it to be. Once you are happy, salt and pepper added to taste, consistency good - then add back in the 1 1/2 - 2 cups of mixture that you set aside. This way your soup is nice and smooth but also has some character with the bigger chunks of beans and veggies. See photo below.

To serve, ladle some soup into a bowl, top with chunks of avocado (or guacamole, as shown in photo below), cheddar, sour cream, fresh cilantro - one or all of these toppings. You can also serve with some lime wedges and tortilla chips (as crackers) if you like.

This soup is quite filling so if you are serving before a main course, just serve a small bowl. If you put it in the fridge overnight it will thicken and you will have to thin it out with broth or water before serving.

For a great guacamole recipe, click here: http://www.richlerrecipes.blogspot.ca/2011/09/best-guacamole-ever.html

Let me know how you like it!!

Favourite Lemon Loaf

I wear many hats in my life and the most important one is being a good Mom to my two beautiful boys. As part of this responsibility, this year I volunteered to be the Class Rep for my youngest son’s classroom. I help out with sending messages to parents, and drumming up support for causes dear to the school (like putting together Christmas baskets for neighbours in need). 

My most recent assignment was to encourage parents to contribute to a themed class basket to be auctioned off at the Withrow Public School Silent Auction taking place on February 28 at the school. Our theme was “What’s for dessert?” which was right up my alley. 

I sent out the email request last week and the first person to respond was Erica, the Mom of my son’s friend Gavin. She contributed a lovely loaf pan and a “favourite lemon loaf recipe”. We are suckers for anything lemon-related in our house so I knew I’d be trying this recipe as soon as I could get my hands on a copy – I asked Erica to send it my way and we made it that very night. We weren’t disappointed.

As with any new recipe, sometimes you test it out and it doesn’t quite make the grade. This happened to me with my first attempt – this recipe calls for self-raising flour. I didn’t have any and I guess I was really tired and wasn't thinking clearly, so I decided to just use regular flour. I also cut back on the sugar and butter, as I usually do. I figured this was OK because Erica said that she did the same thing. The end result was a very dense, not very tall loaf – the flavour was fantastic though, and so we ate the entire thing. I am posting the photo of the flat loaf below, just to make you smile.

The kids (and The King of Soup) asked me to make it again so this time I used the trusty internet to find out how to make my own self-raising flour. Turns out it’s easy – you just add baking powder and salt and voila! You’re good to go.

The photos here are from the second attempt – you can see how light and fluffy the loaf looks in the photos. Just delish.

Below are the ingredients and instructions, with my notes and edits, as usual. Thanks Erica!

Ingredients:

Loaf

¾ cup unsalted butter (I used ½ cup salted butter and ¼ cup 0% fat Greek yogurt)

¾ cup sugar (I used ½ cup)

1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest (about the zest of one lemon)

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 ½ cups self-raising flour (I used 1 ½ cups all purpose flour + 2 tsp baking powder + ½ tsp salt)

1 tsp lemon extract (the original recipe didn’t call for this but I thought it would give it an extra lemony burst, and it did)

Glaze

½ cup sugar (I used ¼ cup)

¼ cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice

Method:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Spray a loaf tin (9x5 inches) with cooking spray and line the bottom of the pan with a rectangle of parchment paper (I didn’t use the parchment and everything turned out well).

In an electric mixer beat the butter, yogurt, sugar and lemon zest for 2 – 3 minutes until fluffy. 

Add the beaten eggs in three parts, alternating with a spoonful of the flour/baking powder/salt mix. Mix well after each addition then add in the remaining flour mixture and fold in until smooth.

  

Pour the batter (it’s thick) into the pan and smooth it out on top. 

Bake it for 50 – 60 minutes (it only took 45 in my oven) or until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. I would start checking at about 42 minutes or so. 

Turn the loaf out onto a wire rack, then flip it over so it is right side up. Take a skewer and poke a few tiny holes in the top, and then place the rack with the loaf on it on top of a plate. The tiny holes you make in the loaf will help it to soak up the lemon glaze you are about to pour on top.

Take ¼ cup of sugar and ¼ cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice and mix with a spoon just a couple of times – you don’t want the sugar to dissolve. Spoon the mixture (quickly) on top of the warm loaf. The juice will sink in and the sugar will form a crystal-like crunch on top. In the photos you can see the crystal-like sugar coating sparkling in the light.

You can serve it immediately, or it will keep (but not for long because it is so delicious). I recommend keeping the juice that drips onto the plate and spooning it over your slice for additional lemon burst. You can serve it with sliced strawberries, or any kind of berry, or raspberry jam. 

As an 'official' dessert, it should serve 8 people. As a loaf, nibbling away bit by bit, it could last for up to 5 hours. I'd be very surprised if it lasts for longer. Especially if there are kids in your house.

Vegetarian Mofongo

Two weeks ago I was in Puerto Rico for a few days. It was difficult for me because I am a vegetarian who doesn’t eat fish and generally, the food in PR is very heavy on the meat or fish. We had been warned not to eat fresh vegetables because they would have been washed in local water that the delicate bellies of Canadians might not be able to tolerate. While there, I heard of several incidents of people throwing caution to the wind and ending up in their bathrooms for hours on end. 

If the vegetables and fruit had a peel on them and the peel was removed, they were considered safe. So I existed on cucumbers (peeled), oatmeal, protein bars that I brought from home, melon, and bananas. By the end of the 5 days my stomach was a mess.

On the last night of the trip, we ate in a restaurant on the resort grounds and it was the first meal that everyone really enjoyed. I was a bit put off when I first looked at the menu because again, it was full of meat and fish. I spotted some rice and beans so I ordered that, but was informed that the beans actually had pork in them. I asked the very patient waiter if there was anything at all on the menu that I could possible eat. He responded with one word: mofongo. 

Mofongo is essentially fried plantain with garlic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mofongo It has a texture not unlike potato, and the flavour is mellow and basically takes on the flavours of whatever it is cooked with. I had never had plantain before because I always assumed it would be sweet like bananas. I could not imagine something as sweet as a banana in a savoury dish, but plantain is not really sweet at all. Traditional mofongo contains pork (what a surprise), but the waiter assured me that the chef could make a true vegetarian mofongo for me. I decided that it would be good to try a traditional Puerto Rican dish at least once before leaving town, so I ordered it. It arrived in the form of a tower. The tower was hollow and inside was filled with overcooked and slightly bland vegetables. Aside from those vegetables, it was delicious.

Here is a photo of my Puerto Rican mofongo (apologies for the blurriness):

As soon as I returned to Toronto I did some research on mofongo recipes. One of my thoughts on the version I ate in PR was that it was a bit dry. The waiter explained to me that if I had ordered the meat or fish version, it would have come with a sauce. Because the veggie version was made specifically for me (and one other colleague who is also a vegetarian), there was no sauce. I decided that for my mofongo I would add caramelized onions since they make everything better. I also figured the oil from the cooking of the onions would add some moisture to the dish. 

I also topped my mofongo with sautéed veggies, but for my version, I added water to the pan near the end of cooking to make the veggies saucier (almost like a broth). This worked well but for the next time, I think I will make a separate veggie broth to just ladle over the entire plate before serving. My husband, who is not a vegetarian, ate his mofongo with au jus on top (he happened to be making a pot roast at the same time and so he took a ladle of the jus and used that to moisten the mofongo. He had two helpings.)

I got my eldest son to try to mofongo and he thought it was pretty good. This leads me to believe that I could form the mofongo mash into French-fry shapes, “batter” them with egg whites, and double bake them to make them like crispy French fries. This will be my next recipe test so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, here is how I made my mofongo. The recipe I used as inspiration was from http://suite101.com/article/adventurous-cooking-vegetarian-mofongo-a105334 . My only comment on this web recipe would be that the instructions were not 100% clear. Hopefully my instructions below will be easier to follow.

Ingredients:

This recipe will make 4 – 5 mofongo patties. Enough for a side dish for 3 – 4 people, or a main dish for 2 people. 

2 green plantains, peeled and sliced (note that you have to use a paring knife to remove the peel – it doesn’t come off cleanly as with a banana because the fruit is unripe)

½ tsp salt

2 cups cold water

2 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole

1 medium sweet onion, diced

Olive oil (or vegetable oil) for frying the plantain

Salt and pepper

Yellow, red, orange peppers (your choice), sliced thinly

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 carrot, sliced thinly

1 clove garlic, crushed

Feel free to add additional veggies if you have them on hand (perhaps zucchini, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.)

Water

Vegetable bouillon cube (if you opt for the veggie broth on top)

Method:

Soak the plantains in 2 cups cold water and ½ tsp salt for 15 minutes. Drain in a colander and pat dry with paper towel.

Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan at medium high heat and add the diced onions and whole garlic. After about 5 minutes, add the sliced, soaked, drained plantain. Fry the plantain on each side until golden brown (about 10 minutes).

Remove from heat and let cool for a couple of minutes. Pour the contents of the pan onto a chopping board and roughly chop it all up. Thank you to my husband who did this for me.

Transfer to a bowl and use a potato masher to mash it all together.  Add water or broth to make the mixture easier to handle - it will be dry.

Note: if you have a mortar and pestle large enough for the mofongo, you can skip the chopping and mashing and go directly to the mortar and pestle.

You can eat the mofongo now, or you can fry or bake it again to crisp up the outside. Before you crisp it up, make your sauté of veggies.

Heat some more oil in a pan (or use cooking spray). Sauté the onions and garlic for about 2 minutes at medium high heat, then add the celery and carrots and sauté for another 2 minutes or so. Finally, add the peppers and other veggies. Near the end of the cooking add about a cup of water to deglaze the pan and make a bit of broth. Add some salt and pepper and other herbs if desired. I didn't add any wine but I suppose you could to add deeper flavour.

Use a vegetable bouillon cube and some boiling water to make an additional broth on the side. Do not add this broth to the veggies as it will make vegetable soup which is not really what you are going for.

To crisp up the mofongo, the recipe I consulted (website above) suggested making small balls of the mixture, flattening the ball into a patty, and either frying it in the same pan or putting it in the oven on a greased cookie sheet (250 degrees for 5 minutes). I opted for the cookie sheet/oven option but found there was no way this was going to crisp up in a 250 degree oven. I ended up raising the rack and broiling at 500 degrees for 1 minute per side. 

These are my mofongo patties before being baked.

Place the mofongo patties on a plate, top with the sautéed veggies and broth. Serve while hot. If you are serving as a side dish, you can top it with whatever sauce you are serving with your main.

Enjoy!