The restaurant reviews have been few and far between lately, and for good reason. With the farmers’ market right outside our door, grocery shopping has been a snap, and has encouraged me to do more cooking than I’ve ever done before. Though many of our meals involve tried-and-true dishes, I’ve also worked hard to ensure a new recipe works its way in now and then. Some of these are adopted into our regular rotation, and others…are not.
Cauliflower Roast on Moroccan Chickpea Stew
The first vegetarian dish that, thankfully, turned out to have a happy ending was a Moroccan stew with chickpeas, from We Eat Together.
This recipe allowed us to finally make use of the gorgeous Le Cruset that Mack’s Mom had given us. A set of the Dutch ovens had been in their storage unit for some time, and after Mack and Thom were able to dig out the box, she said she would be happiest if the pots could find a good home.
It was an easy recipe to put together, especially because I had cooked the chickpeas the night prior. Into a pot of sautéed onions went some potatoes, prunes, stewed tomatoes, honey, water and the chickpeas, and on top, an entire head of seared cauliflower from Kuhlmann’s (instead of just half). The florets steamed up nicely in the oven, and added an additional texture into the stew.
Moroccan chickpea stew
My favourite part of this recipe was definitely the fragrant spices – a cinnamon stick and toasted cumin seeds perfumed the kitchen wonderfully, and made it difficult not to peek under the lid as it baked. I was also amazed that the water took on so much flavour – I usually add stock, but here, it really wasn’t necessary.
Hot and Sour Curried Eggplant with Tofu and Pineapple
Mack and I couldn’t wait for the Food Canada Network’s delayed broadcasting of the seventh season of Top Chef (particularly as it took place in Washington, D.C.!), so we were downloading it, staying afloat with our American counterparts as it aired on Bravo.
Though I’ve never before been inspired to cook an on-screen dish before, Kenny’s hot and sour eggplant did it for me. And given that I’ve never cooked with eggplant before, I thought this was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
My first mistake was opting to use a fan-modified recipe instead of Kenny’s recipe. Although I liked the ingredients that went into the latter, I was swayed by the inclusion of tofu that could round the side dish out into a main entrée.
My second mistake was not knowing how to cook eggplant properly, all the more sad given they were whimsically beautiful eggplant from Sundog Organics. I thought some stewing would probably be in order, given the usual texture of eggplant in dishes. This recipe didn’t allow for any extended stewing time, so I increased the cooking time, but it wasn’t enough – the eggplant was still gummy, and paired with the extra firm tofu that had a similar biting resistance, the dish as a whole wasn’t very pleasant to eat (I probably should have peeled the eggplant, as directed in the recipe, but the fairy eggplant were so tiny to begin with I couldn’t do it). The pineapple was a pleasant addition, but other than that, this dish was a complete miss.
Hot and sour curried eggplant
I’ll be deferring to Kenny’s recipe in the future for my next attempt at cooking eggplant.
Only Here for the Food 