Dgourmac's Blog

What do you think of when I say “roasted vegetables”?  I’ll bet it’s the usual suspects: eggplant, zucchini, red peppers, onions…all good choices, but a little prosaic at times.  Well, vegans and vegetarians have some marvelous other choices.  Tonight’s dinner —  a collaborative effort with Barbara — was an example.

After placing two sweet potatoes (or garnet yams) in a roasting pan, she put them in an oven preheated to 425° F.  She cut and roasted in the same oven 1-inch thick steaks cut from a fine head of cauliflower.  Separately, she sauteed onions, garlic and a can of Italian tomatoes in olives oil, then added some pitted, coarsely chopped Kalamata olives. Next step was to place the sauce on the reasonably tender steaks and roast that until the flavors concentrate.  Top with chopped chervil or Italian parsley.

In the meantime I did a very simple Roasted Napa Cabbage, after cranking the oven up to 450°.  Here’s what emerged from the oven:

Properly plated and served with a 2010 Li Veli Salento Negroamaro Rosato:

Excellent, but not quite done.  I had an appetite for salad as well, so I cut up a single Belgian endive, added some shredded lettuce and washed young organic arugula leaves, and then finished it with a vinaigrette (salt, pepper, Spanish sherry vinegar, Puglian olive oil and a few drops of cool water) and topped with shelled organic pistachios and my miracle ingredient of the night — sprouted rye berries.

Where the hell does one get sprouted rye berries?  Answer: one buys organic rye berries, soaks them overnight, drains them and then rinses them twice a day for 2 days, when they sprout.  Add water to the quart jar and let it all sit for two days, producing the fermented liquid, Rejuvelac, for your smoothie each morning.  After you drain the liquid for your drinks, the remaining sprouted, lightly-fermented rye berries are sweet, elusively-flavored and nutritious — and wicked good on your salad, especially with the crunch of pistachios.  If that’s too much trouble, go without the berries, no problem.  Buon apetito!

sprouted rye berries

A few nights ago I made dinner for the first time in a week.  It was one of my favorite ways to cook.  Select very good ingredients; prepare each in a way that highlights its best features; then put the pieces together into an effective whole.  I have no pictures of this event, but here’s a summary:

Primo — Crispy Browned Baby Brussels Sprouts and Roasted Beets with Whole-Grain Mustard lightened with Tofutti Sour Cream

Secondo — Ragout of Eggplant, Artichokes, Mushrooms, Tomatoes and Green Beans, served on Slices of Baked Potato Rounds

Vino — 2011 Laura Aschero Pigato, from Liguria

Pre-roasting or pan searing those ingredients individually paid off handsomely in flavor.  Adding a little thyme, oregano and pimenton to the ragout helped as well.

But that dinner is not the subject of this post.  I give you all that information only as a prelude, to say that’s how I happened to have some leftover ragout in the refrigerator today, which became a simple lunch of discovery.

First, I coarsely chopped the vegetables in the ragout, and then spruced them up with some salted capers which were marinated overnight in olive oil.  Then I grilled some thick slices of a multigrain bread I made recently (whole wheat, semolina flour, einkorn, rye and white bread flour).  Rubbed fresh garlic on the toasted bread.  Added a layer of Cream of Peppers and Eggplant (purchased at Di Palo in NY).  Layered the ragout on top. Served with a wine I found at one of my wine suppliers last week, a 2009 Vid Sur, made in the Canary Islands from Tinto Negramoll grapes, imported by Jose Pastor.  Benissimo.

Since New Year’s Eve is a very quiet affair for us, we had a relaxing day, andI had a chance to do my last small meal for the year.  This was a lunch with one new appetizer dish I wanted to try from Food & Wine, plus an avocado/tomato/olive/basil salad, and reheated vegetables from the night before.

The new dish I examined as a point of departure was Stuffed Baby Peppers with Yogurt and Floral Honey.  Instead of yogurt, I heated up leftover mashed potatoes in olive oil and spread them on the peppers.  We had an old bottle in the fridge of jalapeno-stuffed green olives, so I sliced those up and used them instead of separate ingredients, and I simply used our local honey to drizzle on.  Cute and tasty dish:

The spiciness of the jalapenos suggested a white wine, so I tried the Schloss Gobelsburg  Gruner Veltliner Tradition, which was already open, for the peppers alone.  Nice match!

With the whole meal, I opened a bottle of Li Veli Rosato, which we loved at the winery in Puglia last May.

I felt like starting a new tradition tonight, so I decided to make a bunch of small plates for our dinner.  Partly inspired by the meal at Cava two nights ago, I was able to work almost entirely from ingredients already on hand.  The menu included:

• Roasted beets with tapenade, feta cheese, Russian mix sprouts, and pistachios
• Salt Roasted Potatoes
• Freshly-made hummus on my toasted multigrain bread
• Organic Dolmas (right from a can — doing my bit to aid economic recovery in Greece)
• Provencal-style Sauteed Eggplant with Tomato Sauce
• Grilled Maitake mushrooms

The beets were roasted a few days ago, so mixing up that salad was easy, and I served it up with the hummus for company.

Meanwhile, I cut up two organic Maitake mushrooms and cooked them with just olive oil, salt and pepper, in the gas grill on a very hot griddle.

Last month I had made the salt roasted potatoes and fell in love with the simplicity, taste and texture of the dish.  Fortunately, I saved the bed of salt for reuse, so it was easy to prepare.  Salt in pot, wash, dry and oil the potatoes, lay them on the salt, oven at 450, cook an hour.  Let them sit there until ready to eat…even an hour later, they were perfect.

Since the oven was plenty hot for awhile, it was an opportunity to roast some garlic.  I was even able to locate the little clay garlic roaster we bought years ago and do this at the same time.  Part of the rationale was for making hummus: Barbara can’t tolerate raw garlic, so roasting it made it flavorful and edible for us both.

This meal feels a little like reruns of old TV shows, but I do have my favorites, and this simple eggplant dish is one of them.  You may remember it from our Provencal dinner almost precisely a year ago.  Not complicated, just need good ingredients, good pots, and time.  Saute the eggplant, blot with paper towels when fully cooked.  Chop up best quality Italian plum tomatoes and their juice, saute with garlic, salt and pepper until nice and thick, run through a Mouli or food mill, and spoon on top of the eggplant.  I love the color and flavor intensity of the sauce.

The wine choice was easy.  In keeping with the tapas theme, I went with a bottle of Spanish wine I already had open, a 2009 Benaza Mencia.

How could I resist a wine whose grapes are (as described by the producer) “mostly Mencia with small dollops of Bastardo and Arauxa”?  It’s also a very good value.  Here is what a reviewer for the San Francisco Examiner had to say:

Benaza Monterrei Mencia, 2009 (Monterrei, Spain): Located on the Portuguese border, Monterrei is the smallest denominción de origen in Galicia. Winemaker and owner Álvero Bueno purchases fruit from local farmers and uses stainless steel for fermentation and a short aging period. Crisp is not a word commonly used for red wines, but it fits here. Floral and spicy with red fruits, this is a delightful red for the fall.

Happy Holidays!