Roasted eggplant and tomato soup

Cold, wet weather requires soups with a bit of heat.  Of course, we're still full on the summery vegetables (or rather botanical fruits culinary vegetables) here in central Maryland - and we had a lot of eggplant and peppers to use up, but ratatouille or pasta just didn't seem right on a day that required fleece jackets and rain boots.  I was also in the mood for something flavorful, but still kid-friendly, without requiring twenty pots on the stove in addition to the soup pot.  So I preheated the oven, got to work with a vegetable peeler, and listened to the rain pounding on the roof.  If I lacked the kids, I would have added a seeded chile pepper of some type.  If my husband lacked me, he would have added two, with seeds intact.  Take from that what you will.

Ingredients:

2 medium sized traditional eggplant, peeled and cubed

5 Roma or paste tomatoes, peeled with a vegetable peeler (I swear this works)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 teaspoons cumin

1 teaspoon coriander

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon cloves

 2 bay leaves

4 cups vegetable stock

Method:

Preheat oven to 400F.

Toss eggplant, tomatoes, 1 tablespoon olive oil, and salt into a roasting pan, combine well.

Roast botanical fruit culinary vegetables until very soft and lightly browned, about 20 minutes.

Sweat garlic and onion in remaining olive oil in large stock pot over medium-low heat until translucent.

Add cumin, coriander,  cayenne pepper, cloves, and bay leaves.  Increase heat to medium high, fry spices 1-2 minutes, until fragrant.

Add roasted eggplant and tomatoes.  

Stir and let cook down 1 minute.

Add stock and bring to a boil.

Let soup simmer 15 minutes.

Remove bay leaves.

Blend with an immersion stick blender, food mill, or blender working in batches.

Serve hot.

This week's CSA

CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. I basically get a share of something, whatever the farm or its partners feels like, a week. It can be great, it can be exciting, it can be disappointing, but for us it's worth it.

Actually, Human # 3 is now doing pick up, so the posts are going to be even more sporadic than before. Here's what we got in the CSA this week:




Peaches, pattypan squash, pears, tomatoes, lettuce, red peppers, cauliflower, and white eggplant. Hardly visible is bread from the Breadery.

The peaches will be eaten out of hand by the humans who don't itch when they eat peaches. The patty pan squash will be cut in half and stuffed with tomatoes and breadcrumbs. Pears will be poached in whatever I feel like drinking a glass of that night. Tomatoes will be stuffed into the squash. Lettuce will be made into salad. Red peppers will be sliced and taken by Human # 1 in lunches. Cauliflower will be made into soup. The white eggplant will be made into eggplant parm - honestly, I would never suggest doing this with white eggplant, but I'm too lazy to do anything else.

My camera is officially broken, so these are from my blackberry instead. Anyone have recommendations for a good digital camera?

Vegan Blueberry Tart

Had a party last weekend. I made a bunch of things, but the only thing that I think was really different and special was the vegan blueberry tart I made.

Vegan Blueberry Tart
Ingredients:
6 cups blueberries, picked over and washed
1/3 cup sugar, or to taste based on the sweetness of the blueberries
One stick Earth Balance Butter Sticks, or similar, cut into small pieces and popped in the freezer for 10 minutes
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
Cold water, enough to make the dough dough-like, usually about 4 tablespoons
If desired, powdered sugar to garnish (I don't)

Method:
Oven to 425F.
Sift together the salt, flour, and 2 tablespoons sugar
Using a pastry blender, or a food processor, cut the buttery stick pieces into the flour mixture. It should resemble pebbles.
Start slowly adding water until a dough forms.
If things are getting too melty, pop into the freezer for a few minutes.
Grab your tart pan, and pop your dough into it. Using your *clean* hands, push the dough around the pan until it's fully covered.
Place a piece of parchment paper over the crust, weigh it down with some pastry weights or beans, and bake 10 minutes.
Reduce heat to 350F.
Mix together the rest of the sugar with 3 cups of blueberries. Pop it into the crust, and place the pan back in the oven for 35 minutes or so, until the blueberries have turned into jam. At least once or twice, pop into the oven and stir the blueberries.
Pull the tart out of the oven, and place the rest of the blueberries on top. Really, you could place them in concentric circles. But I don't. I actually think that's slightly crazy. They're pretty enough without perfection.
If desired, sprinkle some powdered sugar to garnish.

Millions of peaches, peaches for me...

Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man, in a factory downtown....


Okay, well, peaches don't come from a can. Except when they do. Like now. Except they were put there by me, a woman, in a suburban kitchen. I assume they're delicious. I wouldn't know, because peaches make me itch. However, many people like them, including Human #1. So I'm canning some poached peaches, to be eaten later, or to be given away as holiday presents.

While Human #1 and I were in Charlottesville (Canine #1 and Human #3 stayed home), we drove up Carter Mountain, which is right by Monticello. They have fabulous fruit - they actually supply a lot of the local Whole Foods. We got half a peck of freestone peaches, and half a peck of nectarines. The latter are basically in my stomach. The half peck got a little lighter, so I added in the peaches from this week's CSA. Bad idea - the CSA peaches were clingstone, not freestone, which meant that they needed to be done separately. Oh well. Here's how you poach peaches. Get thee to one of the farmer's markets, or a local farm, or a farm stand, or the grocery store, and poach some peaches. Serve it over ice cream, or in a bowl with some cream dribbled on top, or just eat it with a spoon.

Poached peaches

Ingredients:
1/2 peck peaches
3 cups water
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 sticks cinnamon
1 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Method:
Blanch peaches. This means take a small pot, fill 3/4 of the way with water, and boil. Grab a big mixing bowl, fill 1/4 full of ice and 1/2 full of cold water. Note both the pot and bowl are only 3/4 of the way full. Stick a peach in the boiling water for about 1.5 minutes, then pull it out with a slotted spoon, let it drip a few seconds, plunge it in the ice water. Slip off the skins.

If the peaches are freestone slice in half with a paring knife, and pull out the stone. If, on the other hand, they are clingstone, start cursing. Then ignore the whole slicing open thing and follow the steps with the pit in. And remember to get freestone peaches next time.



Take a big pot, fill with all the other listed ingredients. You can do all honey or all sugar, I just used what I had on hand. Bring to a boil. Decide whether you're a presentation kind of person. I am very much not a presentation kind of gal. Like, so totally not it's not even funny. So I just break my peaches in half and cook them. I assume you could cut them nicely. Slap the peaches into the liquid. Lower heat, let cook about 5 minutes, maybe 10 if they are big chunks.

If you have stones still in your peaches, cut the peach with a knife and fork (I swear it works), and pull out the stones. Bring to a boil for 1 minute to kill any germs introduced in this process.

Now, how to store? You can serve immediately, put them in the fridge, or can them. Basically, that just means taking hot peaches, placing them in hot sterilized jars, and processing them in a hot water bath for 5 minutes. It's easy, but I'll give better directions in another post.

These peaches are fabulous for just about anything. Be creative. And try tossing my recipe, and poach with vanilla! Or basil!

Strawberries!!

I love strawberries. Real strawberries. Tasty, yummy, wonderful strawberries. Not those red watery things that taste like nothing. Luckily, we went strawberry picking at Larriland Farm, and picked about 20 lbs. Of course, this was while my toe was still dislocated, so it wasn't exactly pleasant. However, strawberry season is too short to worry about things like pain.

We ate a bunch of strawberries out of hand, both plain and with sweetened whipped cream (I always add a bit of salt to it, something about the salt makes the sweet even better). I made an ordinary and not very good strawberry pie that was gelatined. But I made some extremely tasty (if I do say so myself) strawberry sorbet and strawberry ice cream. Posts to follow.