Thursday, October 21, 2010

Recipe of the week, 10/17

I had initially planned on blogging about THIS recipe recreating a Top Chef hot and sour eggplant winning dish on the show. I don’t watch this show (or any reality TV, really) but I thought it’d be neat to try something gourmet.

So I bought the items, I made it and I didn’t like it.

eggplant1

I was just too spicy for my liking – I needed to cut the curry amount by half and that’s without even adding any red pepper flakes. I saved the rest of it because I think it’s salvageable paired with some Naan, but I just couldn’t eat it as is.

Happily, the next day I received my first CSA delivery

eggplant (1)

Fresh greens (which have turned me off bagged salad indefinitely), local coffee, bread from this great bakery in Providence and local goat cheese. It was all so marvelous!

Since I had leftover eggplant from this recipe, I decided to make myself an eggplant & goat cheese panini!

eggplant (2)

I included an onion and sun-dried tomatoes soaked in oil for some extra flavors.

I started by cooking the eggplant and onion in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. I lightly oiled and salted them before roasting.

eggplant 8  
While the onion and eggplant were in the oven, I covered one side of the pillow loaf with the goat cheese and topped it with some sun-dried tomatoes. Then I removed the onion and eggplant from the oven and compiled my sandwich.

eggplant(3)
You could just stop there, but I love panini’s and have always wanted to make my own, so while I was making my sandwich I heated up one side of my grill pan.

Then, because I don’t have a panini press, I filled a large pot with water to weight down the sandwich.

eggplant (4)

This picture makes me laugh, but it worked! I let it cook for a couple minutes on the grill like this, then flipped it and did cooked the other side.

Paired with a side salad and I had a delicious meal

eggplant (5)

This was super tasty and I really can’t stress how great it was that everything was fresh. I regret only getting the goat cheese every other week, but considering how much I gorged on it last night, it was probably a wise decision.

However I will be getting the pillow loaves and greens every week, so more panini’s are sure to come! I know I’m excited!

5 comments:

  1. I just want you to know that:

    1. That's how the Queen herself, Paula Deen, suggest making panini's without the grill thing. (well she used a skillet and an iron or something)

    2. Both those recipes look fucking good.

    and

    3. TJ's has the best sun dried tomatoes.

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  2. Your sandwich looks so good. I would to be able to make paninis so I may use your idea of using a pot. Or I may be lazy and ask for a panini maker or whatever for Christmas haha

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  3. Also, I totally forgot to comment on the awesome ass matryoshka pepper shaker, omg. WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?

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  4. *salt, at first I only saw one hole, now I see three.

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  5. hay dolly,
    your fancy display of pretty pictures
    makes my little tummy flutter.
    love your blog to pieces.
    I'll enjoy admiring it form afar! x

    ReplyDelete