Local Ingredients: Roasted Eggplant Pasta

Last week felt like an unbelievably long week.  By the time Friday rolled around, I was excited to head out of work and unwind with a kick-butt gym session and some time in the kitchen.  I was especially looking forward to cooking on Friday night because I had a lot of great fresh and local ingredients to work with, including some eggplants and a cucumber from my mom's garden!

While I love eggplant in any form, Bret isn't the biggest fan of its texture.  I decided to make a simple roasted eggplant pasta dish to utilize the eggplants in a way that that I thought Bret would enjoy.  I first started out by slicing my eggplant with the skin on and then eventually cubing it.

I tossed the cubed eggplant in a bowl with some extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.

I spread the eggplant on a baking sheet and then got to work on my red Russian garlic from Siena Farms.  I have never worked with  this type of garlic before but I planned to do a simple roasted garlic preparation.  I cut off the top of the garlic bulb and found the most beautiful hints of red in the garlic cloves.

I drizzled the garlic bulb with olive oil and wrapped it in aluminum foil.  I put the garlic on the baking tray with the roasted eggplant and put it in the oven at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes. 

While the eggplant and garlic were in the oven, I put my pasta water on the stove and got to work on my pasta sauce.  Normally I would make my own sauce but I had a jar of Bertolli Marinara with Burgundy Wine open in the fridge from my beet green and bacon pizza.  Since I hate to let food go to waste, I decided to use this sauce as my base but doctor it up with some flavor. 

I added some fresh cracked peppercorns, salt, oregano, crushed red pepper flakes and onion powder.

After giving it a little taste, I also added a bit of olive oil and let the sauce simmer to infuse all of those great flavors.  I then got to work on my basil fresh from Atlas Farm.  I actually got way more basil than I expected so I suspect that there will be quite a bit of basil in my cooking this week!  I washed a bunch of leaves and finely chopped the basil.

When the garlic and eggplant were ready, I added both to my sauce, along with half of the chopped basil.  Both the eggplant and the garlic were so aromatic and added nice flavor and texture to the sauce.

While I drained the whole wheat angel hair pasta and tossed it in the sauce, Bret made a quick salad using the bag of mixed greens from Siena Farms, a cucumber from my mom's garden, and some delightful yellow cherry tomatoes.

I plated the pasta but decided something was missing.

So I topped it with a slice of Fiore Di Nonno mozzarella and some of the chopped basil.

I was really happy with this pasta sauce because it was full of flavor from the delicious Bertolli marinara base, the heat of the crushed red pepper flakes, the sweet roasted garlic and the hearty roasted eggplant.  Topping it off with the creamy mozzarella and chopped basil definitely added a fresh element to the dish.  Plus, the simple side salad was a cool refreshing contrast to this warm and hearty pasta dish.  Best of all, I absolutely love cooking with local ingredients from both local farms and from my mom's own garden!

What did you cook up this weekend?

Beet Green and Bacon Pizza

After working from home most of last week while battling a nasty cold, I ended up working pretty late on Friday to catch up and to clear some things off my desk before the long holiday weekend.  I had to pick up my best friend Samantha at South Station later in the evening and I wanted to make something quick and easy using the beet greens that I had in my fridge.  After some discussion with Bret, we settled on making a beet green pizza for dinner because we could use utilize a lot of leftover ingredients in our fridge and pantry.

The only thing that we needed was some pizza dough so I stopped by Whole Foods on my way home from work to pick up some up.  

Usually we like to plan ahead for pizza nights and pick some whole-wheat pizza dough from Flour but this pizza dough was just fine and would work in a pinch.  I generously dusted a cutting board with cornmeal flour and let the pizza dough sit out to bring it to room temperature while we got to work on the rest of the ingredients.

First, I rinsed and dried a handful of beet greens.  The first time that I cooked with beet greens, I found that they were a little wilted by the time I got to work on them.  So I have to thank my friend Robin for giving me the helpful hint to immediately cut off the beet greens when you purchase the beets and store the greens in a tight storage bag.  After a week in the fridge, the beet greens were still crisp and fresh.  I de-stemmed the leaves and got to work coarsely chopping up the beet greens.

Meanwhile Bret got to work slicing up a few strips of bacon.  When he was done slicing the bacon, he fried the pieces in a skillet.  When the chopped bacon was crispy, he placed them on a paper towel lined plate to let them cool and for the paper towel to soak up some of the bacon grease.

Using the remaining bacon fat, Bret sauteed up the chopped beet greens, along with four cloves of minced garlic.  When this was cooked down, we placed the bowl in the fridge to help cool the beet green and garlic mixture down.

Bret then got to work on the pizza dough.  We finally got to use our Chinese wooden rolling stick that we purchased at the suggestion of Chef Matt Barros from Myers & Chang.  This made all the difference as it helped us roll out a perfect pizza circle, which we hadn't be able to accomplish with a normal rolling pin.  While Bret worked on the pizza dough, I shredded about a quarter of a block of leftover Cabot's Seriously Sharp Cheddar Cheese. 

Then we were onto the fun part - putting together the pizza!  First we placed the tomato sauce on the pizza.  We decided to use a bottle of Bertolli Marinara with Burgundy Wine.  

I gently spooned some onto the pizza dough.

Next up was a layer of cheese, which was a combination of the Seriously Sharp cheddar and pre-shredded mild yellow cheddar cheese that we also had leftover in our fridge.

Then we added the sauteed beet green and garlic mixture and some more of the two cheeses.  

Finally we topped the pizza with the chopped bacon and the remaining shredded cheese.

We placed the pizza in the oven at 400 degrees for about fifteen minutes.  I wasn't familiar with this dough so I kept checking it intermittently to make sure that the pizza was cooking properly.  I didn't want under-cooked pizza dough but I also didn't want it to burn!

While the pizza was cooking, I put together a very simple side salad.  I had generously received a huge shipment that day of Olivia's Organics salads to try out and I couldn't wait to break into the Asian Salad Mix.

The Asian Salad contains a blend of spinach, red chard, mizuna, frisee, tango, and arugula.  I topped it with sliced cucumbers and gorgeous grape tomatoes.

By the time I was done prepping the salad and setting the table, the pizza was ready and it looked gorgeous!  I had to remind myself to stay patient while I let it to cool before slicing it up.

The pizza had some really fantastic flavors from the really lovely marinara sauce to the salty bacon and the garlicky beet greens.  Of course, I also loved the combination of textures from the gooey mixed cheddar cheese to the crispy bacon and the chewy pizza crust.  

And it was nice to have a simple salad to accompany the pizza, which was perfect for a hot Friday evening.

The beet green and bacon pizza was definitely the most interesting pizza I've ever made.  I'm happy to continue using my farmers market purchases in different ways.

What ingredients do you like to use when making homemade pizza?