Baked Aubergine with Tomatoes and Feta (Melitzanes Fournou me Tyri)

I've mentioned Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking before.  I've been trying a few more things from it out.  One of the things I really like about the book is that it has some more unusual things in it.  One of them was this recipe which is the Greek version of the classic aubergine/eggplant parmigiana or parmigana di melanzane.

Essentially, it is the same dish but with feta instead of mozzarella and kafalotyri instead of parmesan (if you can find it, I didn't bother since I had parmesan in the house).  I loved it - surprisingly different tasting to aubergine parmigiana despite being prepared in virtually the same way - much more intense than the Italian dish, perhaps not surprising as Greek food in general is more gutsy than Italian food which for my tastebuds can sometimes get a bit too delicate.

Essentially, you slice and fry a couple of medium sized aubergines.    Put them aside.  They look like fish.  It is silly.

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Then make some tomato sauce - I went for a tin of nice Italian tomatoes simmered and seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper and a dash of red wine.  Then crumble 200g of feta in a bowl.  Then put some of the aubergine slices on the bottom of a baking dish, put over a third of the tomato sauce, a third of the feta.

Aubergine slices with tomato sauce and feta

Aubergine slices with tomato sauce and feta

Do that again until you've run out of stuff and put the kafalotryi or parmesan on top at the end.  Then bake at 180 degrees for around 20 minutes until the top is golden.

Baked aubergines with tomatoes and feta ready to go into the oven

Baked aubergines with tomatoes and feta ready to eat

Tsaizika - coiled aubergine and feta filo pastry

Tsaizika - cooked

So, as mentioned before, I like to take cookbooks out of the library to test them out before adding them to my (rather too large) cookbook collection.  The other week, I took out Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking by Paola Gavin.  I took it out because it had so many unusual recipes - mostly variations on better known themes - but still.  I like cookbooks with unusual recipes.




I recently tried out my first recipe from her book - for tsaizika which I've never had before but she tells me is a Sephardic Jewish speciality from Greece.  Essentially, what this is is coiled filo pastry with a filling made from burnt aubergine pulp, feta and eggs.   Mmmmm.  In the MightyAubergine household, it generated a certain amount of hilarity:

My lovely husband:  Wow, that looks...  yoni-esque

Me:  How rude!  I'm going to put that in my blog!

MLH:  Oh, come on, you were thinking it too!

Me:  No, I wasn't!

MLH:  I bet you are now!

Me:  Ye-es.  Can't wait to.. tuck in.

Anyway.

Burnt aubergines, feta, eggs, and parmesan filling

Essentially, the filling consists of:  pulp from two burnt aubergines, 150g of feta, 2 eggs, 100g Kefalotyri (or parmesan if you have none) mashed together and seasoned with salt, black pepper and nutmeg. 

Cheat - burnt aubergines in a jar

I am pretty good at doing the burnt aubergine thing but it is time consuming and so I tend to cheat and use jars of burnt aubergine which are available from my local Turkish supermarket.  (Photo to the left.) They have the advantage of also working out quite a lot cheaper.  If you have no local Turkish supermarket or just prefer to do these things yourself, Ottolenghi's description of how to do that bit is pretty good and can be found here. 

You then roll the filling up in tubes of filo pastry (around 3 cm thick) and coil them up like a Danish pastry on an oiled baking sheet.  When you're done coiling up one roll, you do another roll and add that to the existing one to enlarge the coil.  And so on and so forth until you've run out of..  something.  I ran out of filling first.  You then bake for 180 degrees for about 30 mins or until the top is golden brown.

Tsaizika - all coiled up with the oven to go

Tsaizika - all coiled up with the oven to go

The process of coiling was..  a little messy and it decidedly did not look very artistic.  There was a certain amount of spillage as not all of the tubes held together very well.  I overlapped the next tube when that happened and kept it all quite tightly coiled and, actually, the end result was no spillage at all.  I left it to stand for a couple of minutes before cutting into it but, although I fully expected it to explode a bit, the filling was the perfect consistency - moist but non-explosive.  

Tsaizika - cooked

Tsaizika - cooked

Tsaizika - cooked - non explosive filling!

The dish was lovely - one of the most interesting things I've cooked recently.  Though, I did think it could usea different texture in the filling - the feta and the aubergine are both quite similar in that sense - perhaps olives?  or sun-dried tomatoes?  or pine nuts? I also wondered just how important all this coiling business was..  I mean, it was kind of fun but I might be inclined next time just to make it as a pie.  Or as savoury baklava.  Hmmm.  

I have been slightly spoiled by beautiful food photography in most of the cookbooks that I own and I really missed photographs/illustrations when doing this recipe - my lovely husband and I had to debate exactly how to coil the pastry using a rolled up piece of kitchen towel - but, actually, the directions that Paola Gavin gives (at least in this recipe, I have yet to try anything else in the book) were clear enough that I coped just fine.

Goats chese, red onion and rosemary muffins - Delia Smith

As well as the spinach, carrot and cumin muffins, both in order to further justify having purchased muffin tins and in order to try a different recipe, I also made goats cheese, red onion and rosemary muffins for the party.  I used this recipe from Delia which was similar to the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe but without natural yoghurt.





These came out nicely but I didn't like them quite as much as the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ones - to be honest, I think mostly they just weren't quite strong tasting enough for me.  I'd be inclined to try them again with a stronger flavoured cheese - perhaps stilton or very mature cheddar.

Party food - puff pastry tarts, mushroom & stilton, tomato, garlic & olive, tomato & mozzarella

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tart

One of the things that I find difficult about hosting parties is providing enough food to cater for different preferences - e.g. people who don't like cheese or tomatoes or whatever - while not cooking so many different things that results in kitchen chaos.

At the party we hosted recently, I went for making mini puff pasty tarts with different toppings.  Very easy, can be made small enough that they are finger food, and allow you to have a variety of toppings to appeal to all.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tart

Mushroom and stilton puffy pastry tarts

What you do is:  buy some puff pastry, cut into squares of about 2 1/2 inches square, put on topping, bake for 10-15 mins at 200 degrees C.  It's worth leaving some space around the edges to avoid spillage but you don't need to leave more than about a 1/4 of an inch.  To avoid having to faff in the kitchen too much with guests around, we baked these the morning of the party and served at room temperature but they would be good hot/warm too.

The toppings I went for were:

Mushroom and stilton:  which I made by frying mushrooms in butter and sherry, then melting in some stilton.  These were probably the ones that got eaten fastest at the party.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella:  thin slice of tomato on each with a slice of mozzarella on top.  These looked like mini pizzas.

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tarts

 Tomato, olive and garlic:  slice of tomato, olives and chopped garlic.  Mmmm, garlic!

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tart

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tarts

Carrot, spinach and cumin muffins - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

I bought a couple of muffin tins a while ago and I have been feeling guilty about them ever since.  I love buying things for the kitchen which is already stuffed with things - crockery of various sorts, stockpiles of things like spices and pulses and things I bought for a particular recipe and then pushed to the back of a cupboard - and do try to restrain myself from buying more.  So, having only used the muffin tins a couple of times has been weighing on my conscience. 

So, I decided to bake some savoury muffins for a party that we had recently.  I like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipes so decided to try his one for carrot, spinach and cumin muffins.  The recipe can be found here (need to scroll as it's the last one in the article).  They came out beautifully - I particularly liked the slightly sour tang from the natural yoghurt - and were a big hit at the party.  It was, however, crucial to monitor them carefully in the last few minutes they were in the oven as they went from undercooked to cooked in only a couple of minutes.

 

 

Shak (curry) innovation - paneer, potatoes, broccoli and red pepper

I am not usually very innovative in my shak combinations.  I tend towards the traditional combinations that I was taught.  For example, I usually cook paneer with either spinach or peas (not both together).  But, for some reason, the other day, I decided to branch out and go for a new combination:  paneer, potatoes, broccoli and red pepper. 



The different textures made it quite interesting but, if I made it again, I think I'd ditch the red pepper as I don't think it added much. Method of cooking as per the usual shak recipe but with the paneer and potatoes fried together for around 15-20 minutes before the rest of the vegetables added.  Used half a tin of chopped tomatoes right near the end (no earlier to avoid making the paneer soggy) because my lovely husband loves tomatoes but you could definitely skip them.

Paneer and potatoes frying

Paneer and potatoes frying

 

Fattoush Greek salad

I spotted this recipe a few days ago for fattoush salad which reminded me that fried pitta bread on salad is generally a good thing.  As happens to me not infrequently, it did strike me that the recipe could be improved by the addition of garlic.  So, I crushed some garlic into the oil that I fried the pitta bread in.  And some chilli flakes.  Because, why not?  Worked well on top of Greek salad with some hummus on the side.

Quick cooking

Although I like to take my time with cooking and really enjoy making things like risotto, there's definitely a place in everyone's life for quick cooking.  I enjoyed this Guardian article on quick cooking.  I think it's absolutely right that quick versions of dishes that should take a while to make are rarely good.  As I discussed in a previous post, risotto is definitely one of those - those versions of risotto that claim to be quicker and easier but just as tasty are just not worth it.

My go-to quick recipes are:

• Shak and rice - since making shak is pretty instinctive for me, I can do this on autopilot and, if I use vegetables that are quick cooking, I can produce it in under 15 mins.
• Thick omelette with vegetables - tortilla/frittata/whatever you want to call it - nutritious and great for using up whatever vegetables/odd bits of cheese/herbs you have left over.  Fry vegetables till cooked, add eggs, salt and pepper, when mostly cooked, add cheese and finish under the grill to melt the cheese.
• Filled pasta and pesto - very very quick (about 10 mins) and easy
• Welsh rarebit style - bread spread with mustard, topped with mature cheddar, toasted under the grill
• Quesadillas - acquire tortillas, fill with cheese (and anything else you fancy - e.g. mushrooms, refried beans) and fry on both sides - takes perhaps 15 mins in total.

But, mostly, I'm not that into quick cooking - not that everything that I cook takes hours but I really don't mind spending half an hour in the kitchen.  Almost especially if it's been a long day, it's nice to focus my mind on something different.

Olympian vegetarians

Vegetarians - despite Pop-eye's valiant championing of spinach - have always had a reputation for being weak and weedy.  So, it was nice to see this article from The Guardian on vegetarians who are competing or have competed in the Olympics.  In particular, it was nice to have a mention of those - like myself - who have been vegetarian all their lives.  Not that I disapprove of "converts" - I just find it irritating when it's assumed that every vegetarian is a convert.

Prague restaurant reviews - Knotra and Maitrea

In a departure from the usual London restaurant reviews, a couple of restaurant reviews from Prague where we spent a couple of days as part of a holiday.

First up, Pizzeria Kmotra which I'd been to before - quite a few years before.  It was lovely then and it's still lovely now.  There's an English menu and the staff are cheerful and willing even if you don't speak any Czech.  The pizzas are lovely traditional pizzas but with some innovative options - e.g. I had one with blue cheese and potatoes which is definitely a combination that I'm going to experiment with at home.  It's also incredibly good value - we had four main courses and soft drinks for about £20.  Very highly recommended.

Second, Maitrea, a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant.  A lovely atmosphere - lots of Buddhist decoration and a water feature (!) in the downstairs bit.  A slightly insane variety of food on the menu - there were some Mexican options, some Chinese-style food, some standard European fare, some traditional Czech options.  The three of us went for things from all corners of the menu but all were good - I enjoyed having the chance to have something in the traditional Czech style as that's not easy when you're vegetarian.  Again, very good value - the three of us had main courses and soft drinks for around £20.  Recommended.