Baked Ziti with Eggplant

I know I've fallen out of the swing of things around here, but how about I skip the apologies for my absence (the usual summer fun distracted me, and then I started a new job, woo!) and instead I offer you this baked ziti. Yesterday after our weekend house guests left for the airport and we put together some awesome new furniture, I found myself on the couch with WGBH on the TV. And Lidia was on. I've never actually watched Lidia before, but she was making baked ziti and it looked good. Like really really good. Like go buy a box of pasta and some cheese and get that in the oven. So tonight we had baked ziti. And when I took that mediocre picture up there and put it on facebook, somebody asked for the recipe (Hi, Maura!), so I figured that was as good a reason as any to get back here. Buon appetito!

Five Cheese Baked Ziti with Eggplant
inspired by Lidia Bastianich
Serves 6-8

1 pound ziti (or penne or some other tubular pasta)
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb skinny eggplants, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 32 oz can crushed tomatoes (or a quart of home canned if you've got 'em)
1 cup whole milk ricotta
5 ounces sharp provolone cheese, diced small
3 ounces fresh mozzarella, diced small (I used a generous half of a standard mozzarella ball)
parmesan cheese and/or pecorino romano, grated, as needed (I had both so I used them, one or the other is fine)
fresh basil, torn, if you've got it - I used about two tablespoons
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it generously.

While the water comes up to a boil, heat the olive oil in your largest skillet over medium heat and add the onion, cook until translucent (5-10 minutes depending on your heat level), then add the garlic. After about a minute, move the onion and garlic to the sides of the pan, then add the eggplant. It's going to look like a lot of food. Now's a good time to season it with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the eggplant is soft. Add the tomatoes and stir, then bring to a simmer and cook until it's not watery anymore.

The sauce should thicken fairly quickly if you've got it in a nice wide skillet, so drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes less than it says on the box (you'll be cooking it further in the oven so undercooking it a touch here keeps it from being soggy).

Just before the pasta is cooked, add the ricotta to the sauce and stir it in. When the pasta is done (it should be quite al dente), drain it and add it back to the empty pot. Add some sauce to the pasta and stir so it doesn't stick together. Put half a cup of the sauce in the baking dish and spread it out over the bottom. Reserve another half cup or so for the top layer, but go ahead and add the rest of the sauce to the pasta.

Spread half the pasta on the bottom of the baking dish, sprinkle half the cubed provolone and half the cubed mozzarella over it, then grate some pecorino and parmesan over it, then sprinkle with half your basil, if using.. Repeat with another layer of pasta, provolone and mozzarella and basil, spoon the rest of the sauce evenly over the top, then grate some parmesan and/or pecorino over the whole thing. Go ahead and be generous, here, you deserve it.

Put the baking dish in the oven and bake until lightly browned on top and bubbly, about 40 minutes, rotating halfway through. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes after it comes out of the oven so it can set up and you don't burn your mouth.

30x30: Month Six

Well, there went July. Sorry for the radio silence, folks, summer has a way of getting away from me. I'm sure you know the feeling, right? You get caught up in gardening and going to baseball games and playing with smiling babies and eating rather a lot of seafood.

Let's get to it, shall we? Oh, and for reference, here's my original 30x30 post.

Culinary Projects
Nothing new to report. Sigh.

Professional Projects
I'm teaching a class next week! Woo!

Personal Projects
I cleaned up my google reader, finally! And then, of course, I added a bunch of new blogs to it. Heh. I also purged my cookbook collection. Not just that, Adam and I actually purged our whole bookshelf and sold a bunch of them to a used book seller, woo! We also went through our wedding photos and culled it down from over 1,000 photos to 161 maybes. Next step is to cull it further to 70 or so that we genuinely want in the album and make an appointment with our photographer. Let's hope he remembers us from two years ago, heh.

Also still working on Project 365 and my Read-Thirty-Books project. Book 13 was The Art of Fielding by Chad Hauerbach, Book 14 was Room by Emma Donoghue, Book 15 was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Book 16 was Real Food Fermentation by Alex Lewin and Book 17 was The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow. Whew. Looks like I'm on the way to finishing my book project ahead of schedule!

House Stuff
I cleaned out under the guest bed! I also cleaned the front hall closet, my closet, the linen closet and the weird side closet in our bedroom AND I rearranged the living room furniture. BOOM. Progress has been made, even if it wasn't on the original list.

Fitnessy Stuff
Can do one chin-up. Scheduling conflicts have come up with my usual October 10k, so I'm contemplating a half marathon.


New goals met this month: 3 
Total goals met so far: 10 

I'll try to resume regular posting now. I missed you guys.

30x30: Month Four

Sorry, guys, this has not been a great month for checking things off the list. Look at this pretty picture of some radishes I grew to distract you from my failure!

Culinary Projects
Nothing new to report.

Professional Projects
Nothing new to report.

Personal Projects
Progress, but nothing checked off yet. Read two more books (Fall of Giants by Ken Follett and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot), which brings me to 12. Also still working on Project 365.

House Stuff
Nothing new to report.

Fitness
Nothing new to report, except that Julia and I ran the 5 mile Boston Run to Remember (and had someone take a sweaty, red-faced picture at the end). I finished in 50:20, which is just a touch slower than I need to run a 6.2 mile race in under an hour. So! Theoretical progress on that front, anyway.

New goals met this month: 0 (sigh)
Total goals met so far: 7

Popsicle!

I don't want to say for sure that any sorbet recipe you find will translate perfectly to popsicles, but I used the strawberry-rhubarb sorbet recipe from The Perfect Scoop and it sure did. I got eight 3-ounce popsicles plus enough left over for another one or two, (I was out of molds.) I hope you all are out enjoying this awesome weather and that you find a tasty frozen treat to enjoy today!

Brown Rice Cakes with Olives and Herbs

I've written three different starts to this post but they all sound dumb. You guys know it's good for you to eat more whole grains, blah blah, I don't have to tell you that. Farro is delicious, quinoa is actually so big it's cool to make fun of it now, wheat berries are great if you remember to soak them, etc, etc.   But what I can tell you is that I've been really enjoying cooking out of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals by the lovely Maria Speck. I made these rice cakes a couple of weeks ago (tip: always make twice as much rice as you need, then you'll have leftover rice. ta-da!), and last night I got to eat the Artichoke Rosemary Tart with Polenta Crust at a pot luck meeting. I look forward to making it myself. What's your favorite whole grain recipe?


Brown Rice Cakes with Olives and Herbs
adapted from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals by Maria Speck
makes 6-8 cakes

I think this recipe would scale brilliantly should you want to have more than six cakes, but this was enough for a nice light dinner for us (with a salad, as you see), and Adam took a couple for lunch the next day. I also think this would be totally awesome as a first course if you served just one over greens, maybe with a dollop of homemade garlic mayo? Mmm. 

about 2 cups leftover cooked brown rice
3/4 cup panko bread crumbs, divided
1/2 cup grated parmesan or pecorino romano
half a bunch of scallions, finely chopped
1/3 cup finely chopped, pitted black olives such as kalamata
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs (I used parsley and oregano
2 eggs, lightly beaten
plenty of salt and pepper
a few tablespoons vegetable oil for frying

Mix together the rice, 1/2 cup of the bread crumbs, cheese, scallions, herbs, olives and eggs in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Level the mixture out in the bowl, then use a butter knife to divide it into 6 or 8 portions. I found that smaller cakes (no more than 2 - 2.5 inches in diameter) were easier to cook, but you can do as you see fit.

Spread the remaining bread crumbs in a shallow dish and season with salt and pepper. Pack each portion into a small cake, then coat the cakes in the bread crumbs. Heat vegetable oil in a medium heavy skillet (cast iron is my favorite for this) until a breadcrumb dropped into the oil sizzles immediately. Working in batches so you don't crowd the pan, fry the cakes until firm and dark golden brown, 3-5 minutes per side or longer. Be sure to get some good color on them, don't wuss out as soon as they start to turn golden! The brown crispy bits are the best part. I like to use an offset spatula for flipping small things like this.

Cakes will hold on a rack on a sheet pan in a warm oven (200F) while you finish the remaining cakes.

Jam on it! If it is pizza.

Speaking of cleaning out the jam cabinet, have you considered jam on pizza? Like instead of sauce? My friend Miranda suggested it (she's been using fig jam) and dudes IT IS BRILLIANT. The pizza above is apricot-rosemary jam with mascarpone and then lightly dressed arugula once it was out of the oven. I recommend this combination, but I'm also curious: what other jam/cheese/other toppings combo would you guys put together? I was thinking tomato jam plus cheddar would be pretty rad, or a berry jam plus goat cheese, maybe. What do you guys think?

Oatmeal Jam Bars

I recently did a little kitchen cabinet inventory and discovered that I may have been a little jam-crazy last summer. I still have five jars of tomato jam, nine (nine!) jars of jalapeno jelly, a few apricot rosemary, four sour cherry (hooray, my favorite!), a rhubarb, a peach, and a few plums. Canning season is just getting underway (I've already pickled some asparagus), and I need to make some space in the cupboard. So I polled twitter about what to do with all that fruity goodness. SO MANY GOOD IDEAS. Cakes and tarts and cookies, oh my! Roving Lemon passed along this recipe, originally from The Pioneer Woman, and since it was the simplest thing I had all the ingredients for, I made them to take to a party last week. They were a hit! Oh, and Adam is looking over my shoulder and suggests that you cut them into 16 smaller bars rather than 12.

Oatmeal Jam Bars
makes 12-16 bars depending on how you cut them
adapted, but not much, from The Pioneer Woman

I used plum jam, but I think the beauty here is that you can use whatever you want or have extra of - strawberry jam this month, peach in July, apple butter in September, woo!

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt (use 1/2 tsp if using fine sea salt or table salt)
14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
10-12 ounces jam (I used one full 1/2 pint and a few spoonfuls from another 1/2 pint)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl, then use your fingers to smush the soft butter in. Cut a strip of parchment paper and use it to line the bottom and two sides of an 8x8 baking pan. Spray the pan with non stick spray.

Put half the oat mixture in the pan and use your hands or a spatula to press it firmly in an even layer. Spread the jam over the oats, then sprinkle the other half of the oats over the jam and use your hands to press it into an even layer. No need to pack quite as firmly here, you don't want to smush the jam to the bottom.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, rotating halfway through, until the top is light golden brown. Let cool in the pan, then use the parchment sling to lift the bars out of the pan (you may need to run a thin knife around the edge). Cut the bars into squares.