Book Club appetizer: Mediterranean Bruschetta

(This photo is courtesy of the Food Network (hence the reason it looks so nice) - I forgot to take a pic, so I hope they don't mind me "borrowing" theirs...)

Ever notice how people pronounce the word "bruschetta" differently? Even on the Food Network, the Italian and Italian-descent chefs all say it different. For instance, Michael Chiarello from Easy Entertaining always says "brew-sketta" while Miss Giada and Mario say "brew-shetta." Rachel Ray has some in between weirdy pronunciation that's too hard for me to write out phonetically.

Just for the heck of it, I looked up the etymology of the word on Webster's. Here's what it said: Italian, from Italian dialect (Tuscany), from bruscare to toast, burn, probably from Vulgar Latin *brusicare, frequentative of *brusare, *brusiare to burn: thick slices of bread grilled, rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil, often topped with tomatoes and herbs, and usually served as an appetizer." So, there you have it, folks... bruschetta is little more than some burned bread with garlic, olive oil and tomatoes.

I volunteered to bring an appetizer for this past Monday's book club meeting and settled on Giada's Mediterranean Bruschetta. I had never made bruschetta before, but this looked good when I watched her whip it up the other afternoon, so I decided I'd give it a shot. It took me a little less than a half hour to make it and everyone at book club loved it (or so they humored me). Here goes...

For the bread:
1 loaf ciabatta bread, cut into 1/2-inch wide slices (about 16 for a 1 lb. loaf) -- Whole Foods bread buy was kind enough to slice mine for me there; they have this very cool slicing machine!
1/4 cup olive oil
1 lemon, juiced (about 3 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and ground black pepper

For the topping:
1 (15-ounce) container of whole milk ricotta cheese
2 large tomatoes, seeded and diced (about 2 cups)*
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint leaves, plus a little more for garnish!
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

*To seed your tomatoes: Take a small serrated knife (they cut through the skin of tomatoes easier and minimize tearing) and slice off the tops of your tomatoes. Take the remaining part of your tomato and gently squeeze over the sink until you begin to see the "innards" of the tomato squish out. Using the index finger of your other hand, scoop the seed goop out of each of the pockets in the tomato until you are basically left with the skeleton of the tomato. From here, cut your tomato into small bite-sized pieces.

Instructions:
Place a grill pan over medium-high heat or preheat a gas or charcoal grill. (I used my little indoor grill once again.) Drizzle the bread slices with olive oil.

I'm not always the best at drizzling. (Sometimes it's hard to control the oil coming out of a bottle!) So, I dipped a pastry brush in my olive oil and "painted" the oil on my bread on one side and placed all the pieces oil side down on my grill. As they were cooking, I painted the other side of the bread. This probably isn't the most efficient way to go about things, but whatever. Drizzle, paint, splatter - as long as it gets on there somehow...

Grill the bread until golden on both sides, about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove the bread, squeeze the lemon juice over the bread slices. Sprinkle the bread slices with dried oregano, salt (I used Kosher) and pepper. (Go easy on oregano as it has a nasty habit of overpowering food when too much is used.)

Random aside: "Ciabatta" means "slipper" in Italian, which is sort of apropos considering the flat, rectangular shape of the loaf. Ha!

For the topping, combine the ricotta, tomatoes, 3 tablespoons of mint, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Gently stir together.

Since I was taking this over to a friend's house, I opted to just keep my bruschetta dip in a bowl because it made for easier transfer. I garnished the bruschetta with a sprig of mint and served it alongside the grilled bread slices, letting people serve themselves. But I'm sure it's pretty to spoon the topping over the bread ahead of time and then arrange on a plate before serving. Whichev!

For those interested, we read Khaled Hosseini's new book A Thousand Splendid Suns for this month's book club. I still think I liked The Kite Runner better, but this was a good, quick read. And SAD. Don't read it if life's got you bummed out right now. Then again, maybe you should. If you're a woman, it's bound to make you thankful you didn't grow up in Afghanistan in the '80s and '90s.

Eggplant Rollatini

(I'm not always the best on presentation, but I assure you this tasted good.)

So, this meal was vegetarian(ish), which is unusual for me, but my uncle gave me some fresh eggplant the other weekend and I felt compelled to do something with it. Having never worked with eggplant before (except once on a so-so ratatouille long ago), I wasn't sure what to expect. The recipe I used came from Giada De Laurentiis's Everyday Italian cookbook, and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. (Photo doesn't really do this meal justice.) Since, her recipe called for three eggplants to yield six servings and I only had two, I fudged with the proportions. This meal could have easily fed four on just two decent sized eggplants. I froze four pieces of it and will update this post with how the meal tastes post defrost.

Ingredients
2 medium-sized eggplants
Kosher salt and black ground pepper (Giada used sea salt, I used kosher b/c that's what I had)
Can vegetable spray
15 oz. ricotta cheese
1 large egg
1/3 cup of shredded mozzarella
6 tablespoons (give or take) grated Parmesan (I like to use the real stuff and grate my own because I think it does make a difference)
2 tablespoons of toasted pine nuts
15 basil leaves, chiffonaded
Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
1 1/2 cups of fresh tomato sauce


Instructions and such
Eggplant is a nice meaty vegetable, but it can end up tasting tough and bitter if not handled properly, so the first thing I did to treat this vegetable, per Giada, was to cut the top and bottom off the eggplants, and then cut them lengthwise into 1/2-inch thick slices. You could go thinner if you wanted (I did for some of the pieces to experiment with which I liked better and found that I preferred the thinner slices). From there, I placed the slices on a cooling rack over top a cookie sheet and sprinkled kosher salt on both sides and let the pieces sit for about 30 minutes. (Giada said only 10 to 15 minutes, so use your judgment -- mine looked like they needed to sit out a bit longer.) The cookie sheet is to catch the drips of moisture that the salt will bring out of the vegetable. If you don't have a cooling rack, you could salt the pieces and set them in a colander with a few papers towels underneath -- us lonely chefs must improvise sometimes!

While the eggplant sat, I did some much needed laundry (was down to the dregs of my underwear drawer) and also preheated my little indoor electric grill to medium heat and my oven to 375 degrees.

Note on electric grills: If you don't have one, this is a good way to blow a 100 bucks -- especially if you live somewhere where you don't have access to an outdoor grill. Even if you have an outdoor grill, which I do (charcoal), some nights it's too much of a hassle to use it -- like last week when I locked myself out of my apartment -- so this is a good alternative. (I think I got mine on sale a few years back at Williams Sonoma for around $70.)

Back to the recipe... Once your eggplant has sat, rinse and pat dry with paper towels. I'm thinking if you didn't have a grill pan or anything that you could easily fry up the eggplant in a skillet over medium heat with some olive oil to brown and soften. I sprayed PAM on my grill pan and grilled the eggplant for about 5 minutes per side -- long enough to get some grill marks. Remove slices from grill pan and allow to cool.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat your egg until it is lightly scrambled. Mix in the ricotta with the egg. Add mozzarella, two tablespoons of Parmesan and toasted pine nuts, and gently combine. Fold in basil just to combine. Don't overmix! I added a little salt and pepper to this mixture as well.

Place a tablespoon of the cheese mixture on one end of the eggplant and roll up tightly. (Since my eggplants were sort of short and squatty, this was a little tricky, but I did the best I could.) Place the eggplant rollatini into a greased (with olive oil) 13 x 9-inch baking dish, seam side down. Continue with remaining eggplant. Evenly distribute tomato sauce on top of the eggplant rollatini -- add more if you need to. I just bought a good jar of tomato basil sauce from Whole Foods, which tasted great.

Season the dish with a little salt and pepper. Sprinkle your remaining Parmesan over the top (I also sprinkled a little grated mozzarella because, well, I have a thing for cheese, but it's not necessary).

Bake for 15 minutes or so -- I might have gone a little longer than this because my oven is tired. Once cooked, drizzle the top of the eggplant with a little extra-virgin olive oil.

Garlic bread and a simple salad would be good with this.

Post-it: August heat and misc. seafood tidbits

This weekend as I was sitting in a crab boat with the mid-morning sun beating down on my head, doing my best not to be a total fuss pot after being woken up at 6:30 to go out crabbing for our family's annual crab feast, my cousin uttered a few sage words: "August is God's way of reminding you to be thankful for fall."

I couldn't agree more.

I just checked weather.com to see what the temperature is by my house and it's 101 degrees. This triple digit absurdity makes me look forward to feeling a cool September breeze on my face. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to rush summer out or anything. I love summer. But when it gets this hot, I get very sluggish and tired. Then again, maybe that's because I'm not getting enough sleep. Sigh.

I have a post about a recent recipe that I tried, but for the moment I just feel like writing random stuff. (It's my blog and I can do that.) I think I'll label these type posts "Post-its."

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post today about Tilapia and how it's consumption has gone way up among the average shopper, but that chefs are not big fans. Snooty Bob Kinkead, chef-owner of Kinkead's in Foggy Bottom and Colvin Run Tavern in Vienna, called it "insipid," "spongelike" and "inferior." "Not in my restaurant," he declared. "Never sold it, won't sell it." Whatever, Bob.

In other D.C. seafoody news, the owners of Hank's Oyster Bar in Dupont (LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this place) are planning to open up another restaurant in Old Town Alexandria on King Street in September. Will be looking forward to checking that out. They make a Lobster Roll sandwich that is out of this world, not to mention the oysters there are always fab. Here's hoping the new place is a little bit bigger.

Locksmith Salmon with a Side of Stupid

Alaskan Sockeye Salmon fillet full of bones: $5.46
Misc. items for a veggie pasta dish that turned out just OK: $9
Bottle of cheap Rose that gave me a headache the next morning: $11
Emergency locksmith charge after locking myself out of my apt.: $230

Sitting down to a sub par dinner at 11:30 p.m.: INFURIATING

Yeah, I know. You were expecting me to somehow pull a "priceless" out at the end of that or tell you that somehow I magically managed to cook an amazing meal that was worth the hassle and expense of what I went through last night, but that would be lying... What can I say? Some nights you come to the end of your evening wishing you would have ordered take-out sushi or Dominoes delivery. Such is life.

Last night's dinner wasn't terrible, but it probably would have tasted a hell of a lot better had I eaten it three hours earlier and didn't have to pay an exorbitant charge for some dude to pick my lock after locking myself out of my apartment whilst going out to check on the coals for my grill.

Inspiration for this dish came from this month's Bon Appetit magazine. More to come...