Some things I made...

Cabbage soup
With a tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom of a stock pot, soften one large onion, chopped, then add two stalks celery and two large or four small carrots. Also four cloves chopped garlic, salt and pepper. One half of a napa cabbage then eight cups liquid and a can of fava beans. Serve with grated pecorino cheese.
Leftover Spanish rice, grilled peppers and onions (we had fajitas Sunday night) and leftover spinach salad with a clove of garlic and a teaspoon of acidified butter. Cooked into a fritata of three eggs topped with queso blanco.

A soup from a while back...

Mushroom-Barley Soup 
Ingredients

2-3 ounces of dried porcini mushrooms

A few tablespoons of olive oil 

3 medium onions

3 ribs of celery

4 medium carrots 

6 cloves of garlic 

kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

Handful of fresh parsley

2-3 tablespoons of tomato puree

8 cups of water or vegetable stock, or a combination

1 1/2 cups of barley - this was too much. I would probably cut this down to a cup, or even a tiny bit less, but I had exactly 1.5 cups, so in it went!

Fresh parsley and grated pecorino for garnish

We'll be moving soon, so I want to cook all the little bits and pieces that are in my fridge and cupboard so I don't need to move them!  I was digging around in the bottom shelf of my pantry today and found a bag of dried porcini mushrooms from one of E's favorite places, the Atlantic Spice Company.  I also had some  barley and soup veggies in the fridge, so I was set.

The last time I cooked barley, I made a red wine and mushroom risotto and it was a bit of a disgrace! Basically, I wasted a lot of food and no one wanted to eat it.  So I decided to do a bit of research and check out a few different recipes to find something truly lovely.  I wasn't disappointed!

First, I used about 2-3 ounces of dried porchini mushrooms.  This looked like about 1 cup of dried mushrooms, loosely packed.  I soaked them in 2 cups of boiling water. We will use this water later, so don't pour it away! Could have used a little more mushrooms, but we still had great flavor. E could have liked the mushrooms chopped a little larger so he could have had bites of 'shroom.

In a large stock pot, I heated a bit of olive oil and lightly sauteed 3 medium onions, 3 ribs of celery, 4 medium carrots, 6 cloves of garlic with a hefty pinch of kosher salt and black pepper.  I cooked it over a medium heat with the lid on till the veggies were slightly caramelized.  I added a handful of parsley, chopped and stirred, then moved the veggies to the sides of the pot and dumped about 2-3 T of tomato puree in, and let it cook a bit. This caramelizes the sugar in the tomato paste and gets great flavor out of it. Some people like E think they don't like tomato paste, but I believe it's because they don't cook it properly.  (TIP - when I open a can of paste, I store the remainder of the paste not needed for the recipe in the freezer. I make sure to portion it into small amounts, like 1.5T or so and either wrap it in saran wrap or like last time, simply plop the amount in different corners of a tupperware and tossed it in the freezer) Brought the heat up to medium high, and mixed all together and let it cook a few minutes.

After the mushrooms have soaked for about 30 minutes, pour off the liquid through a sieve. Maybe use a cheesecloth or paper towel, as gritty bits tend to come off.  Chop the mushrooms finely. E suggests not so finely, a matter of personal preference.

As the veggie and tomato paste mixture has been cooking a few minutes and getting super delicious, add the mushroom liquid.  Bring it to a boil and mix well. Use an immersion blender to puree all the bits and make it thick and delicious, then add the chopped mushrooms.  Add about 8 cups of water or stock.  I used water and a bit of stock concentrate, better than beef bullion, veggie style.  Add 1.5 cups of barley, bring to boil and cook at a low boil for 60-90 minutes, depending on how you like your barley.  Add salt to taste.

Serve with a sprinkle of chopped parsley and I grated a bit of pecorino romano cheese on top.

Unstuffed Turkish Eggplants for Dinner

Since our house is mostly fixed up and we accomplished Project Get Married, I've hosted people for Friday night dinner two weeks in a row! Last week was roast duck and rice with dried fruits, apples and butternut squash (recipe to come). This week, my friend Karol and her husband Shai were coming over. I originally was going to just serve snacks, but everything I wanted to make for snacks was nitpicky and I wanted something easy...so I stopped by a lovely Lebanese store after a meeting with a client on Friday and picked up a few pastries with spinach and cheese or meat, little containers of eggplant salad, yogurt with cucumbers, hummus, lovely olives and fresh baked pita. I put those out on the counter for people to nibble on with wine while I put up the Turkish Eggplant dish, unstuffed with a meat and rice mixture (I love having an open kitchen, where people can comfortably hand out with me while I cook!). It's much easier than the longish recipe seems, and the only sort of fussy step is initially cooking the eggplants on the stove top, but it is necessary. I call the eggplants unstuffed because I couldn't be bothered to stuff them before cooking, but they do end up looking stuffed when you serve them. 

Either or both the eggplant preparation and the unstuffing preparation can be done well ahead of time, and the whole thing can be assembled ahead of time as well and refrigerated until you want to cook it or just cook the whole thing the day before and heat it up in a low oven. The small amount of leftovers was delicious today!

Turkish Eggplants

4 -6 small Italian eggplants, peeled but with the top “cap” remaining, with a slit down the long side, soaked in very well salted water at least 20 minutes

4-6 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 lbs ground beef or lamb

Tablespoon tomato paste

¾ cup basmati rice, cooked in 3 cups of water until par boiled, about 10 minutes

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon allspice

½ teaspoon Allepo pepper

Pinch of red pepper flakes

¼ cup of dried currants

½ cup each of chopped dill and flat parsley

Dried mint for garnish

Full fat plain (I suggest Greek) yogurt for serving

Handful of fresh pomegranate seeds for garnish (optional)

First, preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rice to cook in a small pot by bringing to a boil then turning down to a simmer. We are not cooking the rice to donenesss, nor are we trying to cook out all the water. Cook about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium sized dutch oven with a lid, saute the onion and garlic in olive oil until softened but not browned. After a few minutes, add the tomato paste and stir, then add the ground beef or lamb. Allow to cook until no longer red, then adding the parboiled rice along with the liquid remaining in the pot. Add salt, peppers, dill, parsley and currants. Cook for about 20 minutes on a low simmer. If there isn’t enough liquid that it’s a little soupy, add some more water or chicken stock, make sure it doesn’t dry out!

While the meat cooks, after soaking the eggplants in salted water for at least 20 minutes, pat them dry and pan fry in olive oil until browned and slightly softened. Put aside.

After the meat and rice mixture has simmered for about 20 minutes, lay the pan fried eggplants on top of the mixture and spoon some of it over them, so the eggplants are sort of submerged inside the mixture, but don’t worry about getting them completely covered. Put the lid on and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. At that point, make sure that the eggplants are completely cooked; if they are a little hard, cook an extra 15 minutes, but if you softened them during the pan saute step, this shouldn’t be an issue.

To plate, place an eggplant in a small bowl open it up (I inserted tongs into the slit I made when I peeled the eggplants) and spoon in the meat and rice mixture. Overflow the eggplant with the mixture and sprinkle with dried mint and a few pomegranate seeds if you have them around. Serve with yogurt on the side if you wish; I did not.