Deep Thoughts by Robert Felty

Tonight I made a new recipe. Clare had bought some mushrooms the other day, and I bought eggplant yesterday. I thought that an eggplant mushroom ragout sounded good, though I didn’t know exactly what it would entail. I googled it, and found 2 good possibilities. The first possibility, which I did not choose, was more what I would think of as stuffed eggplant. It involved slicing the eggplants in half and filling them. This particular recipe seemed to throw away most of the eggplant flesh though, which seemed strange to me. The second choice, which I did make, instead called for rolling up thin slices of eggplant. I decided that the eggplant would taste better this way, so I went with it.

Even though it took several hours, the result was very tasty, and worth the effort. I followed the recipe almost verbatim, except that I substituted dried tarragon for fresh basil in the stuffing, since my basil plant is pretty much dead. Clare enjoyed it too, though as I predicted, she wasn’t too wild about the sun-dried tomatoes. She couldn’t put her finger on it until I told her the ingredients though. She also mentioned that I should have put more olive oil on the eggplant, which is correct.

My resolution for 2009 was to make 52 new recipes throughout the year, or roughly one per week. I tracked my progress using kibotzer.com. I didn’t quite reach my goal, but I ended up making 45 new recipes, and I am pretty satisfied with that. Most of the recipes were from cookbooks I already own or from the internet, but some were my own inspirations. For most of the recipes, I also blogged a little about them, so that I would remember how I made them. In 2010, I am looking forward to revisiting many of these recipes, and continuing to improve upon them to fit my taste.

I tried this goal once several years ago, and enjoyed it, but by June the goal had definitely slipped my mind. Kibotzer helped me keep working towards my goal through gentle reminders every month or so, plus having my goal public also gave me a little extra incentive.

Here is a little slideshow of most of the recipes I tried.

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  Indian ratatouille

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  Indian skillet

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  Rigatoni with seitan puttanesca sauce

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  Penne with butternut squash sauce

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  Mjadra sandwich

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  Curried spinach pea soup

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  Spanish bean soup

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  Arctichoke soup provencal

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  Spinach coconut soup

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  Penne with creamy tomato, spinach, and seitan sauce

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  Squash, fennel, and apple soup

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  Vegan cole slaw

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  Sweet and sour seitan

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  Black bean quesadillas with pico de gallo

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  New Orleans sweet potato hash

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  six cheese ravioli

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  Tofu Stroganoff

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  Penne with sweet and spicy pepper, mushroom, and cannelini sauce

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  Mock pork with curried apricot and napa cabbage

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  Lentil, ginger, and cocunut soup

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  Somen noodles with napa cabbage and seitan

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  Creamy red lentil chowder

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  Vegetable korma

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  Black bean corn enchiladas

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  Penne with caramelized onion, mushroom and white bean sauce, accompanied by mixed green salad and cracker with red pepper eggplant spread

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  Fruit swirl bread take two

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  Sweet potato chana masala and baingan bharta

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  Fruit swirl bread

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  Baingan Bharta

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  hoisin eggplant and bok choy

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  corn bean salad

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  Beer-braised red cabbage

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  French lentil soup

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  Stovetop stuffing

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  vegetarian pho

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  vegetarian pho up close

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  corn chowder

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  Working towards 52 new recipes in 2009

This was my last new recipe for 2009, and it was fairly improvised. I had recently looked up puttanesca in wikipedia, discovering that it is a “pantry dish”, meaning that most of the ingredients are staples in an Italian pantry, and mine too. I did alter it a bit. Normally it has anchovies, which I omitted, and normally it does not have onions which I added. And I also added in some seitan for protein. The result was quite tasty.

Here is what I used:

• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 pasilla (poblano) peppers
• 1 large onion
• 1 can mock pork (seitan)
• 20 green olives, chopped
• 2 cans petite diced tomatoes
• 1 can tomato paste
• 2 tsp capers
• 1 cup white wine
• Italian seasonings

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, so I have been trying to use up what is in the house. One thing I had on hand was a butternut squash. One of our favorite recipes is corn, bean, and squash soup, but we have had that several times recently, so I decided to try something different. I thought it might make a good sauce for pasta, so I went with that. I mostly stuck to this recipe from the nourishing gourmet, but I added some cannellini beans and some whole milk at the end, since I also needed to use that up. The result was ok. Adding more salt helped a lot, but I think that it was too thick, too squashy, and too much sauce for the amount of pasta. So next time I would probably use either more millk and pasta, or less squash (and more salt). It was a nice way to use my new immersion blender though, and I have been looking for tomato-less pasta sauces recently, since I keep hearing how canned tomatoes are bad for me.

While we were in Michigan over Thanksgiving we stopped at our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in Ann Arbor, Jerusalem Garden, for a tasty mjadra sandwich. Mjadra is basically just lentils, caramelized onions, and either rice or bulgar. I haven’t been able to find it at restaurants in Colorado, so I decided to try to make it myself. I found quite a few recipes online, some with rice, and some with bulgar. Some had almost no spices, and some had many. I decided to use a cup each of brown lentils and brown rice, 2 large onions, a little cinnamon and some cumin. I also added about a half cup of bulgar at the end to soak up the remaining water. It was pretty good, though I think next time I will cook it a little longer, use less cinnamon, and add garlic.

I put the mjadra in a pita, along with some baba ghanoush, lettuce, a pickle, feta cheese crumbles, and a little Red Hot.