Tag Archives: eggplant

Grilled Mustard Eggplant Burgers

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We don’t grill a lot.  We don’t have a grill because we don’t have the space, and although there are grills in the community garden across the street, by the time evening rolls around I’m usually pretty much done with community until sunup.  But we had agrilled mustard eggplant burgers pretty purple-and-white speckled eggplant from the CSA and four ears of corn, and I’ll take grilled corn on the cob over any other variation any day.  And thus we created:

Grilled Mustard Eggplant Burgers

  • 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 2 tbs Dijon mustard
  • 1 ½ tbs salt
  • 1 tbs cumin
  • ½ tbs chili powder

Mix marinade ingredients in a jar (I pretty much always eyeball stuff, so the measurements are give-or-take).  Cut 1 small eggplant into roughly ¼ inch-thick slices and lay them out in Tupperware.  Pour marinade over them and leave in the fridge for a few hours.  Then grill the babies, periodically brushing remaining marinade on the slices, for something like twenty minutes.  Serve on sliced sourdough bread with arugula.

Grill Monster

It’s Raining Vegetables. Make a Casserole.

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vegetable casserole

All layered up and ready to go in the oven.

August is my favorite month for fresh, local veggies. It’s the time when all the fruit (as in seed-bearing) vegetables like tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and chili peppers hit the table.  But with everything ripening at once, this time of year can leave both gardeners and cooks feeling like they’re drowning in vegetables. Farmer Dwight (of cabbage fame) has been sending me frequent updates about the massive tomato yields that are currently covering every flat surface in his kitchen. Garrison Keillor used to joke that it’s unwise to leave your car windows down at the end of summer lest you discover a squash in the driver’s seat when you come back, deposited by some overwhelmed gardener.

And this week I found myself trying to exhaust our ample CSA shipment before an impending trip out of town. How many vegetables can you fit in a single dish? To find out, I devised this casserole. It’s true that I had to break my own rule about turning on the oven in hot weather, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

It’s Raining Vegetables Casserole

  • 2 eggplants, sliced
  • 6 plum (or other smallish variety) tomatoes, diced
  • Handful of fresh basil, chopped
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 4 to 8 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 1 chili pepper, diced
  • 2 zucchini, cut into half moons
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 6 oz. muenster or mozzarella cheese, sliced
  • Parmesan cheese to taste Continue reading →

Lunch at the End of the Line: Prowling the Financial District

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Zigolini's

The scene outside Zigolini's

Are chains really that bad? That’s what I was asking myself as the man at one of the Financier coffee shops gave me an angelic smile and extra complimentary cookies. Having already followed the subway to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, I realized that I had been neglecting the lowly isle of Manhattan. There are, indeed, ends of subway lines there, like the J and Z station on Broad St. in the financial district. But I’d been avoiding it up to now, because I knew all too well the proliferation of higher-grade fast food joints in any area of Manhattan where lots of people work. Pret A Manger, Potbelly’s, Cosi, Dean and Deluca—it’s not hard to see why places like this thrive here. They’re tasty, fast, efficient, and the best of them seem wholesome enough not to kill you even if you eat it fairly frequently. But if it was going to be a real end of the line experience, Financier just wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted to see where the more discerning regulars went.

Maybe it was the overwhelmingly crowded and fast-paced atmosphere on Broad Street, maybe it was just my mood, but I found myself following a different protocol than usual—I started to spy on people. It was fun to lurk behind unsuspecting men like some sort of iced tea-swigging and restaurant-obsessed femme fatale. Here are some observations I made about the young businessmen in the financial district: Continue reading →