Eggplant

We’ve been harvesting eggplants from our garden for a number of weeks now.  I was first introduced to eggplants when I worked at the Blair Mansion Inn in Silver Spring, Maryland in 1971, while I was courting Rosemary in the District of Columbia area.  We made Eggplant Parmigiana there, and I remember prepping eggplants a bushel at a time.  We’d cut them into slices, salt the slices, let them sit for 30 minutes or more, then brush off the salt and liquid they had exuded, and bread them by dredging in flour, then beaten eggs, and fresh breadcrumbs.  Thereafter the breaded eggplant slices were par cooked in hot oil and frozen for future use.  When an order came in, the chef would splash some Marinara sauce on a sizzle plate, layer the eggplant with grated mozzarella, parmesan cheese, and sauce, and roast in a hot oven until the cheese was melted and browned and the eggplant cooked through. 

Eggplant, known as aubergine in Europe and the Middle East and brinjal in its native India and Pakistan, is a member of the nightshade family, Solanaceae, and closely related to tomatoes, potatoes and tobacco.  A perennial plant in temperate climes, Solanum melongena is grown as an annual in New England.  While we know it primarily as a dark purple, elongated ovoid, it also grows in a variety of shapes (short and squat to long and thin, often curved, to even egg shaped ones) and colors (pink, yellow, green, white and stripped).  As it is related to tobacco, historically its nicotine alkaloids contributed to a bitter flavor, which was purged by salting the sliced flesh.  Over the years, breeders have selected against the bitterness, so while today it no longer remains a problem for cooks, salting eggplant before cooking still has benefits in lessening the absorbent properties of its flesh.  Anyone who has sauted some eggplant knows it will soak up all the oil you put in the pan before it starts to brown. The application of salt collapses the cell walls of the eggplant flesh, expelling air as well as liquid, and leaving less space for oil to enter and become trapped. 

One of the most famous Arabic eggplant dishes is Iman bayaldi, “the priest fainted.”  In this dish, the eggplant is stuffed with onions and tomatoes and cooked in copious amounts of oil, most of which it absorbs.  Supposedly the priest fainted either because the dish was so delicious, or later when he heard how much oil his wife had used to make the dish. 

In an earlier column I wrote about Ratatouille, the French dish comprised of eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini and onions.  The Greeks have their Moussaka, a native dish that combines lamb with eggplants, tomatoes and cheese, the Italians their Melanzane alla parmigiana with eggplants, tomatoes and cheese, and the Middle East its baba ghanoush where creamy roasted eggplant is combined with tahini (ground sesame seeds), lemon and garlic.  These are just a few examples of world class dishes comprised of eggplant, so if you haven’t tried any lately, they are available from local sources now, so it’s a good time to check out this savory vegetable known as “vegetarian’s meat.”

Melanzane alla parmigiana

Eggplant Parmesan

Serves 6

3 Eggplants

2 Tablespoons salt

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup all purpose flour seasoned with a 1/2 tsp. salt & a grinding of pepper

2 cups of bread crumbs and possibly more

2 quarts canola or vegetable oil

2 cups Marinara sauce

1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/3 lb sliced sharp provolone

Slice the eggplant into 1/2" rounds.  Sprinkle with the salt and drain in a colander for 30 minutes or more.

Place the seasoned flour and bread crumbs in separate bowls.  Beat the eggs in a third bowl.  Pat the moisture off the eggplant, dip each piece of eggplant in the flour, shaking off the excess.  Place floured eggplant in the eggs and turn over to coat both sides.  Place in bread crumbs and turn over to coat.  Place breaded eggplant on a rack while you do the rest of them.

Deep fry the breaded eggplant in 375 degree oil for a minute or so on each side, until the bread crumbs are browned and the eggplant is just cooked through.  Drain on an absorbent towel.

Select a baking dish and cover the bottom with a layer of Marinara sauce.  Place eggplant over the bottom, sprinkle on half the grated mozzarella and 1/2 the parmesan cheese.  Cover with a layer of Marinara sauce and repeat a second layer, ending with sauce.  Cover the top with sliced provolone.

Bake uncovered in a 375 degree oven for 20 -25 minutes or until hot and bubbly with the top browned.

Let rest for 15 minutes at least before serving.  Good at room temperature, and better the next day.

Apples

This year’s apple crop is starting to hit the markets.  I bought a peck bag that included my choice of Ginger Gold, Macoun, McIntosh, Honey Crisp and Paula Red, some for eating and some for an apple tart.  I know, it’s “American as apple pie,” but Rosemary makes the pies and I make the tarts.  She’s Fanny Farmer and I’m Julia Child, or maybe Paul Bocuse.

Apples, which are related to pears, are part of the rose family.  Malus demestica consists of 15,000 or more varieties, or which some 2,000 are American.  Originating is Asia Minor, apples are grown all over the world, and are the most popular fruit not only in the US, but also Britain, France and Germany.  China, of course, is the world’s leading producer, the US second while Iran and Turkey vie for third. 

The apple is propagated primarily by the asexual act of grafting, as planting an apple seed will not result a seedling with the same characteristics as its parent.  In fact, the result is often radically different.  When Johnny Appleseed hastened westward to keep ahead of a burgeoning population, planting his orchards of apples, the settlers found that most of the apple crop consisted of “spitters,” that were so astringent as to be inedible, but they made great cider, which converted into alcohol, so his coming was legend.  While hard cider is fermented, applejack, apple brandies and Calvados are distilled apple liquors.

Cider apples (real tart) are one of the four apple groups, the others being dessert or eating apples (crisp and juicy), cooking apples (tart when raw, balanced when cooked), and now dual purpose apples like Golden Delicious and Granny Smith. 

Apples are most associated with desserts, and American originals include apple crisp, apple grunt, and apple pandowdy.  Applesauce, flavored with cinnamon, is eaten with pork, and apples are stewed with red cabbage and braised with chestnuts, and included in Waldorf Salad.  Sliced apples, chutneys and cheese are a common appetizer, but most apple concoctions are for after the main meal.  Apples, with their cell-wall pectins, have good jelling characteristics when cooked down, so they are often made into apple jelly.

Sliced apple will oxidize to an unappetizing brown in a short time if left untreated.  This browning can be prevented by tossing peeled, or sliced apples, with an acidulated liquid like lemon juice, where the high acid environment slows down the natural browning process.

Most varieties of apple store well in an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, which restricts ethylene gas from ripening the fruit prematurely, so even local apples are available well into the winter and early spring after a fall harvest. 

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” may be an old saw, but it has a lot of truth in it.  While apples are not high in Vitamin C and other antioxidant compounds, they show preventive properties relative to cancers of the colon, prostate and lungs.  As they are cholesterol free, contain fiber and are bulky, they assist with bowel cleansing, heart disease and weight loss, which many of us could benefit from.

So be it a glass of cider, an apple pie or the crisp crunch of a snappy new McIntosh, now is the time to enjoy our most prolific fruit that grows all about us.

Apple Golden-Brown Betty

Serves 6-8

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 1/2 cups dry, stale cornbread crumbs, finely crumbled

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white or Turbinado sugar

1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp ground  ginger

1/8 tsp ground cloves

A few gratings of nutmeg

7 or 8 (3 lb) apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/3" wedges

2 lemons, halved

1/3 cup frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

Ice cream, custard sauce, yoghurt or whipped cream

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray a shallow 8 1/2" X 11" glass or enamel baking dish with vegetable oil and set aside.

Toss together the crumbs, sugars and spices in a medium bowl.  Set aside.

Place the apple slices in a second medium bowl.  Squeeze the lemons over the apples, straining out the seeds.  Toss the apples so they are all coated with lemon juice.  This will prevent browning.

Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the crumb mixture on the bottom of the prepared dish.  Follow with half the apples.  Pour the apple juice concentrate over the apples, then scatter about half the crumb mixture.  Dot with half the butter.  Repeat a layer of apples and then the rest of the crumb mixture and the rest of the butter.

Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake until the apples are tender, 30 to 40 minutes.  Remove the foil, increase the heat to 400 degrees and let bake until the top crumbs are deeply golden and crisp, about 10 minutes.  Serve, warm but not hot, with one of the accompaniments.

Tomatoes II

Since last week, the late blight has ravaged our tomato crop so bad that we’re destroying all our plants except a few cherry tomatoes, mostly Sun Gold, which still seem to be doing OK. We’ve enjoyed the shortened harvest, and some fruits are still ripening on our porch, but for the most part a very promising crop has been laid low as so many of our neighbors’ crops have also.

Fortunately, many area farmers cultivate a large part of their plants in hoop or green houses, and these enclosed environments are better able to keep the late blight spores from infecting their crops. There were many heirloom varieties available at the farmers’ market his past weekend, and they should continue to be available for a number of more weeks. So stock up if you’ve had blight problems so you can enjoy some local products this winter when all you’ll see are California or Florida tomatoes in the store.

While China is the largest grower of tomatoes, the US is second in worldwide production, with California growing over 90% of the processed tomatoes, meaning plum or sauce tomatoes, which are available canned year round.

Some tomatoes are determinate, meaning they grow to a specific height and set their fruits, most of which ripen at or about the same time. Indeterminate tomatoes continue to grow until either frost kills them, or the gardener cuts off their top. Indeterminate varieties have their fruits ripen as they grow, so they can produce a continuous crop over a long period of time. At Longwind Farm in East Thetford, David Chapman fills his greenhouses with a single planting, which bears fruit from early March through the middle of November.

Tomatoes are considered a vegetable, a term that is culinary in nature and has no scientific meaning. Botanically tomatoes are a fruit, however they don’t share the common characteristic of most fruits, sweetness, and they are not used in desserts, where most fruits appear in a meal. Rather, the tomato is typically served as part of a salad at the beginning of a repast, or they are included in the main meal itself.

While the tomato is naturally acidic, and this makes it any easy plant to can for home gardeners as a hot water bath is all that needed, not a pressure canner, it was the suspected source of a major salmonella outbreak a couple of years ago. While the FDA and the USDA were never able to pinpoint the source of the contamination, Mexico was a suspect, although Serrano and jalapeno peppers were also identified as a possible source of the infection.

Tomatoes contain lycopene, a powerful anti-oxidant that has cancer preventing properties. It has been positively identified as beneficial in preventing colorectal, breast, endometrial, lung and pancreatic cancers. In fact, organic ketchup is found to have much more lycopene than non-organic ketchups, so a word to the wise the next time you need this condiment.

In addition, tomatoes have been shown to provide benefits in preventing heart disease, and lowering cholesterol profiles. They are a great source of Vitamins C, A and K as well as manganese and potassium and they are low in calories.

So enjoy the local vine ripened harvest while it’s still available, and put some up for winter if you can. They’re delicious right now!

Tomatoes

You have been able to purchase local tomatoes for quite a while now, despite the tomato crop devastation brought on by the late blight.  This disease struck many farmers hard in August just as their field crops started to bear fruit.  Many heirloom varieties that would normally be crowding farmers’ markets and roadside stands right now, while still available, are found in smaller quantities and with fewer varieties. 

We’ve been pretty lucky so far at our house, for while we lost some plants that Rosemary planted on the periphery of the herb garden, our main crop in the vegetable garden is daily bearing a variety of fruits from sauce tomatoes, to heirlooms like Black Russian and Green Zebra, to red and Sun-gold cherry tomatoes to large lobed Brandywines and oval yellow Lemon Boys.   I love the tomato harvest;  tomato salads with Vermont farmstead blue cheese, tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, basil and extra-virgin olive oil, fresh Marinara sauce, BLTs on toasted Red Hen bread with pesto, arugula, Hogwash Farm’s pasture raised bacon, and a slab of Big Boy tomato still warm from the sun, oven dried plum tomatoes with garlic and fresh thyme, or noshing down a ripe Cherokee Purple right out in the garden.  Yum!

Solanum lycopersicum is a member of the nightshade family, and long suspected of being poisonous (its leaves and the roots of many of its cousins are poisonous).  It is grown as an annual plant in our clime, producing the ovary of a fruit, which we refer to as a vegetable.  Usually colored red, many varieties are yellow, orange, purple, black, pink, mottled green and yellow, or red and green, and some are almost white.  Their shapes can be large and round, to heavily lobed, to cherries, grapes or currants; from smooth to having pronounced ribs, to elongated and plum shaped to squat and flat.  There even is one called the Ugli Tomato, which was banned in Florida due to its multi-ribbed appearance, in spite of its excellent taste.  

   Penne with fresh tomato sauce and parsley


Heirloom varieties have made a strong come back recently, as their taste and texture are superior to commercial varieties bred more for their shape, size, and color, and mutated to resist natural pests.  This is the time of the year to really enjoy a good local tomato, ripened on the vine.  What is in the supermarket was picked green in California or Florida, “ripened” by ethylene gas which turns it red, but doesn’t really ripen the flesh, and shipped in a refrigerated container across America to your local store.  NEVER, and I mean never, refrigerate a tomato!  It not only dulls and kills its taste and muddies its texture, even when returned to room temperature, it will not improve.

The tomato originated in South America, probably Peru, before migrating to Mexico, where explorers returned to Europe with seed in the 1500s.  Here it was grown as an ornamental plant until its culinary properties were realized, particularly in Italy, Spain and the Middle East.  Today the tomato is central to the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, olive oil, cheese and yoghurt with moderate amounts of seafood and poultry, and modest quantities of red meats and wine.
 

Next week we’ll continue to look at this flavorful “vegetable” that is used so commonly in everyday cuisine.

                                             Peeled fresh tomatoes for sauce