Hey Robin Klammer
Hope your day was a good one. Mine was great but still going. Like the energizer bunny.
Re your new pub. Thank you girl. May I wait till I begin later writing and posting my own stuff as well as my current commenting?If that’s ok with you. In the new year…Feb/March approx, I will unleash my sassy new creations along with my continued reads and comments. If you will have me then, we will touch base sometime around those months and maybe add me in as a writer at that point. I would really like that.
Now..that recipe I promised. Ok. Here goes. Heads up: It’s my adaptation of one from a cookbook written by Diana Henry called “ From the Oven to the Table”. First thing I have made out of it. She calls the recipe: “Butter Roast Eggplant and Tomatoes, with Freekeh and Koch-kocha”
You will need to buy and then prep:
1. 2.25 lbs Chinese eggplants, washed and dried, top snipped off, body cut in half lengthwise. If they are really long, cut in half horizontally
2. 2.25 lbs grape tomatoes, washed and dried, each one split in two
3. 8 tbsp ( 1/2 cup) good quality store bought garlic butter, melted
4. Sea salt flakes and ground black pepper to taste
5. 1 cup dried freekeh, then cooked according to the directions on the package. It will make 3 cups cooked. I added 1/2 cup dried currants to this grain after I cooked it. Add salt and pepper to taste and 1/8 tsp ground cardamom .
6. Plain Greek yoghurt for serving( dollop of yoghurt on top the roasted creation once it is scooped into individual serving bowls
7. Store bought pesto, made a little more runny by whisking in some extra fine quality extra virgin olive oil.( note this is where the cookbook author made her own Ethiopian sauce, Koch-kocha, but baby girl…that was way too much work so I did the dipity doo with the pesto substitute. The pesto is drizzled over the dollop of yoghurt in the bowls. Prob one to 2 tbsp of that luscious green drizzle)
8. Your favourite hot sauce for giving to each eater to add to their own tastes. S-s-s-s-s-s-s
9. A decadent loaf of homemade some kinda bread to eat along side this dish as long as all these carbs are not freaking you out. If yes, skip the bread.😂
This is what you do with numbers 1 to 9 above:
Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Mix the tomato and melted garlic butter together with your hands. Then dump in the eggplant and roll all around in the tomatoes and butter
Put that tom/gar/eggpl mixture in a big greased pan with a bit of a side on the pan. Higher sides than a cookie sheet. The veg mixture should almost be in a single layer. Salt and pepper to taste. I add tons of ground black pepper. Because: I like playing with my grinder and of course, I love the taste of the pepper.
Bake the garlic butter slicked vegettes. For 30 min. Then turn up oven heat to 425 degrees and bake 40 more min. Keep checking once or three times. If everything isn’t soft, bake a bit longer.
Then. Take out of oven, temporarily put the baked sh** in a heat proof bowl. Put the cooked freekeh mixture in the bottom of the original baking pan you just emptied. Then put the veggies(those ones in the bowl) that you cooked on top of the freekeh mixture. I patted down the freekeh to look like a crust. A freaky one at that😀
Bake the whole thing at 425 for another 15 to 20 min. Or so. Then turn on the broiler to give it a few minutes to nicely brown. Watch carefully.
And you. Are. Golden. Scoop it into bowls and top with yoghurt and pesto sauce. Pass the hot sauce bottle around.
Beauty.
If you have leftovers, I froze mine in portions. As I said earlier, some I might heat up and top it over roasted green beans and then top that with a runny poached egg or two. Or…I might scramble up in a fry pan a slew of spicy ( or not) sausage meat and then add in my leftovers and just eat the whole damn thing with chopsticks right outa the pot. Imagination is a huge asset when deciding what to do with these leftover suckers.
Sorry I have no pictures. I was too lazy to take them because it meant going to another room to get my phone. Pathetic.
Enjoy. Write-talk soon.
