Daily Dinner Table
Ideas for dinner tonight. Household and kitchen tips, recipes, tweaks. What's worked great, and not so great.
Eggplant Barbaraja’ne (rhymes with Parmesan)
Day 2 of eating clean! I’m still enjoying my book, learning all sorts of new things conflicting with what I thought I knew about food and nutrition already. I’m quite the skeptic also, nutrition is my hobby, so I thought I was fairly well versed and I’m not easily swayed into new thinking. I need PROOF! I’m so impressed with the studies in this book. It all makes great sense, but some things I’m just shocked about. That cheese (which I love SO much) can be SO bad for you. I don’t have the book in front of me, and I don’t remember specifics, but the gist is that… cheese is the primary source of saturated fat in America. The method that the USDA uses to measure nutritional calculations use weight rather than caloric measure, (ie: 100 calories of cheese vs 1 oz of cheese give us a very clouded view of what nutrition we’re actually getting.) I find that quite interesting. Also interesting to me, is when the USDA began measuring in this way, and Americans began eating more and more animal foods, the fastest growing cancer and heart attack epidemic in history soared to unheard of levels. I’ve previously read how the USDA has been “financed” by the meat, dairy and corn industries for many many years now. This book seems to have the resources to back it up. It’s so disturbing. So, on my vegetable adventure, I came up with tonight’s fare. Eggplant sans cheese! Whoda thunk it! We really enjoyed it, I hope you give it a go.
This will give you from 2-4 servings, depending on the eggplant.
You’ll need;
1 eggplant peeled and sliced
5 c spinach
6 mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 small onion, diced
1 T minced garlic
3 T minced fresh basil
1 T minced fresh oregano
1 t dried ground coriander
1 tube Amore Tomato paste
1/4 c dry white wine
splash of lemon juice
3 sliced Roma tomatoes
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine basil, oregano and coriander. Set aside.
In large pan, spray a spritz of Pam no stick spray. Over medium heat, soften eggplant slices in pan. Place on plate to hold as done. When all eggplant is par-cooked, spray another spritz of Pam, and add mushrooms. Cook until softened. Remove from pan, set aside. Add garlic and onion to pan. Cook until onion is translucent, then add spinach and wine. Cook until wine had pretty much evaporated and spinach has reduced. Add half of spice mix, and splash of lemon. Stir to blend. Push ingredients to one side, place tomato slices in pan. Cook for about 3 minutes per side.
Lightly spray baking pan with Pam. Place 1/2 of eggplant in pan. Squeeze tomato paste on each slice of eggplant. Spread tomato paste to cover eggplant. Place spinach mixture on top of tomato paste. Place mushrooms and tomato on spinach. Top with remaining eggplant slice. Sprinkle with remaining spice mix. Bake for about 15 minutes. Serve with steamed or roasted vegetables. Tonight we had steamed broccoli with a sprinkling of coriander and squeeze of lemon juice on top. Very good! I hope you enjoy. I’ll do a better job with the names of the dishes in the future! (I hope!)
Eggplant Barbaraja’ne
Daily Dinner Table 