Ratatouille "Lasagna"

Okay!

Getting back into the routine of cooking after a crazy cross-country move has been very easy given the robust natural bounty of the Sacramento valley.

We recently played host to Liz's sister and I wanted to make something hearty and festive. I thought, hey, maybe a lasagna, but maybe lighten it up a little.

Liz had read about swapping out the noodles for zucchini, and I had some boss Japanese eggplants, and I thought, hey, ratatouille is pretty standard summer business, what if I layered it up with some tomato sauce and cashew-tofu ricotta and served it up in delicious layers.



I got some quick tomato sauce started in a pan by sauteing down

• 1/2 a small onion
• 1 carrot
• 2 stalks of celery, and
• 3 cloves of garlic, with
• a hearty dollop of olive oil.

I added

• 1 sprig of fresh thyme and
• 1 sprig of fresh rosemary and mixed in the contents of
• one 28-oz can of whole peeled tomatoes.

After this simmered for a while, I splashed in

• 1 to 1/2 oz dry vermouth

and hit it with the immersion blender.

This didn't seem to be enough sauce, so I added

• 1 8 oz can of tomato paste and
• a half-cup of water.

Next time I'll just make a double batch, and just deal with any leftover delicious sauce, oh no...



In the meantime, I stemmed and halved

• four Japanese eggplants

and set them in the steamer to soften. When they were ready, I sliced them into strips along with

• about five smallish zucchinis.

I chopped up a handful of kalamata olives I found in the fridge and food-processed up

• 1 batch of cashew-tofu ricotta, (recipe forthcoming).

Then, I set the oven to 400 and started layering in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan.







Sauce, then eggplant, then zucchini, then tofu, then some olives and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast. Repeat these layers once and top with whatever tomato sauce you have left. Bake, covered with foil, at 400, until the zucchini is soft, and then uncovered for about 15 minutes.

It turned out great!

Eggplant Tomato Curry

When domestic eggplants finally come into season and I can get them at the store for less than three bucks a pound, a kind of eggplant mania sets in.

This is really the same as my mania for asparagus, tomatoes, avocados, summer squashes, winter squashes...

I have always been curious about using the pressure cooker to make curries, because I have watched numerous videos and read numerous blog posts and articles, but have had little direct experience.

A recipe for eggplant and tomato curry caught my eye, and, since I had two big beautiful globe eggplants and a ripe red tomato, I figured I would go for it. It turns out to be very easy.



So, I prepped:

• two hefty globe eggplants, peeled and cubed
• one fist-sized tomato, sliced
• a couple inches of ginger, grated
• four to six cloves of garlic, mashed
• half an onion, diced
• two ounces of tomato paste, or basically whatever's left over from the six-ounce can you opened for something else

I also got some curry spices: cumin seeds, mustard seeds, turmeric, red chilies, garam masala, salt and black pepper to taste.



Then, the rest of the recipe is pretty standard currying procedure for me:



With a couple tablespoons of neutral oil, fry the whole spices, then the onion, then the garlic and ginger, then the powdered spices.

Then you dump in whatever you're currying and cook it all together. I save the tomato paste to stir in after the vegetables cook. Is this necessary? I'm not sure, that's just how I do it.

The eggplant had to go in two batches, to soften enough in the oil to even close the lid on the pressure cooker. When everything was in the pot, I added about a half-cup of water, closed the lid, brought it up to pressure, and gave it about eight minutes.



The eggplants cooked up all soft and delicious, but it looks like I added just a little too much water out of pressure-cooker-explosion paranoia. Next time, a quarter cup. I stirred in the tomato paste and let it simmer with the lid off for a couple of minutes.



I plated this with some saffron basmati and a fistful of freshly chopped cilantro and mint.