Beef tenderloin with Cabernet-Cherry sauce
Eggplant & Tomato Pasta Sauce
I’ve been receiving eggplant in my CSA box the last few weeks, and I bet some of you have too. I usually use eggplant in ratatouille, but that recipe uses the oven. So would something like eggplant parmesan, plus I’m back to being dairy free. I wanted a recipe that used the stove top, and I was in the mood for pasta. The result was a pasta sauce with eggplant. I’m sure this would also work great in a slow cooker.
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I don’t cook with eggplant very often since my husband and one of my kids are not fond of it. However, I didn’t remember why my son doesn’t like it. When I saw him picking the eggplant out of this sauce, I told him he needed to eat his vegetables. He said, “Eggplant upsets my stomach and makes my tongue hurt.” If he was a little kid I might think he was making it up, but at 16 he wouldn’t say it makes his tongue hurt and expect to get away with it unless it was true. As for his stomach, red delicious apples bother him too, and he loves apples. And so, eggplant will continue to be something I cook only occasionally.
Gluten-Free Eggplant Pasta Sauce
- 8 c. chopped eggplant
- 2 Tb. salt
- 4 c. skinned and copped tomatoes
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1/2 c. chopped bell pepper (color of choice, I used red & purple)
- 1 large clove garlic, minced
- 2 Tb. olive oil
- 1 tsp. dried basil
- 3 oz. tomato paste
- 1/2 – 1 lb. ground beef, turkey or sausage
Chop the eggplant (I did not peel it) and put it in a colander. Add the salt, tossing to coat all the pieces. Let it sit and drain for 1 hour. Rinse with cold water.
The tomatoes can easily be skinned by putting them into a pot of boiling water for 1 minute. Remove to a bowl of ice water. The skins will come right off the tomato. Chop the tomatoes, but do not drain them.
In a large skillet sauté the onion, peppers and garlic in the olive oil. When they have softened some, add the eggplant, tomatoes, and basil. Cook until the eggplant and tomatoes are softened. If the mixture needs to be thickened, add tomato pasted until it is the consistency you want.
While that is cooking, cook the meat in another skillet until browned and cooked through. Drain the meat and stir it into the sauce. Serve over pasta.
Makes about 8 servings.
Spaghetti Sauce From Scratch
I’ve just never bothered with making spaghetti sauce from scratch. One of the things I really like about spaghetti is that it can be a quick and easy meal when using sauce from a jar. The other reason I never made it is that so many recipes use canned tomatoes. To me, that’s not completely from scratch and if I’m going to open cans of tomatoes, I might as well just open a jar of sauce.
I’m actually not very fond of tomatoes. I like them cooked just fine, but I don’t like them raw. I don’t like the taste, smell or feel of them. I even dislike tomato plants. I have grown a few tomato plants over the years for the sake of my family and this year I decided to try a grape tomato plant. That one plant has produced an abundance of tomatoes over the past few weeks and I have learned that I don’t mind eating them raw (the smaller the better, though).
So when I started receiving lots of large tomatoes from my CSA box I knew I would have to do something with them. The grape tomatoes were all we needed for regular eating. That led me to deciding to try spaghetti sauce from scratch. I really thought it would be too much work, especially boiling the tomatoes and peeling them, but I was wrong. Sure, it takes longer than opening a jar, but it wasn’t bad at all, and I made of lot of it.
Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce
- 5 lbs. tomatoes
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 1/2 – 2 1/2 lbs. ground beef or sausage
- 6 oz. can tomato paste
- 1 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
- 2 tsp. dried basil
- 1 tsp. dried oregano
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
- 2 Bay leaves
- 1/4 c. red wine
Start with the tomatoes. They need to be peeled. I was tempted not to peel them, but then I thought of times when I use canned tomatoes and a bit of peel gets in there. It’s tough and unpleasant. Peel the tomatoes. It’s easy to do. Bring a pot of water to boil. I use my electric tea pot to get water hot quickly. The pot does not have to be big enough to hold all the tomatoes. I did four at a time. Also have a bowl of ice water ready to put the boiled tomatoes into. Add the tomatoes to the boiling water and set your timer for 1 minute. That’s all it takes and slightly less time is better than more. As soon as the timer goes off, use a slotted spoon to remove the tomatoes and immediately submerge them in the ice water. Add the next batch of tomatoes to the pot and set your timer again until all the tomatoes have been boiled.
Doing this step doesn’t take long and it makes removing the skins so easy. They slide right off the tomato, and sometimes just fall off. The tomato in this picture was half peeled before I removed any skin.
Once the tomatoes are peeled, slice them in half and use your finger to remove the seeds. You might need to slice them again the same direction to remove more seeds. The tomato half on the left side of this picture has been seeded.
Now chop the tomatoes. The size is up to you. Place them in a colander while you work on the rest of the sauce. Put a bowl underneath if you want to save the tomato juice. Draining the tomatoes will help keep the sauce from being too watery. I actually skipped this step and wished I hadn’t. I had to later thicken the sauce by reduction.
Brown the ground beef or sausage. When it is halfway done, add the onions and garlic to soften them up some. They cook slowly in the crock pot and I like my onions well done. Drain.
Add everything except the wine to your slow cooker and stir to mix. The herbs can be adjusted to taste.
Cover it and cook on high 3 – 3 1/2 hours or low 6 – 6 1/2 hours. Stir in the wine, turn the cooker to high if you had it on low, and cook another 30 minutes. Remove the lid during this time if the sauce is too thin.
This makes a large batch of sauce so you can freeze the extra or plan to use it for more than one meal.
This week’s Ultimate Recipe Swap theme is crock pot recipes. The links there are not necessarily gluten free, but I bet you can find some that are naturally gluten free or could easily be adapted.
Chicken with Red Chile Sauce and Sausage (Pollo con Salsa Rojo y Chorizo)
Pasta Shells with Portobello Mushrooms and Asparagus in Boursin Sauce
Dairy-Free Cream Sauce
Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free is a monthly blog carnival that is run by Naomi of Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried. However, each month the carnival is hosted by a different blogger. June’s hostess is Zoe’s of Z’s Cup of Tea. There is still time to join this month’s carnival since Zoe extended the deadline to Sunday, June 27th. Click on the link for more details.
Zoe’s theme for this month is Dairy-Free Delights. That’s perfect for me since I recently began eating dairy free. Ironically, I’m doing my first dairy challenge today, and I’m sitting here eating ice cream since it is almost 100 degrees outside. However, I have been very strict since beginning my dairy-free diet over a month ago. I accidentally ate dairy twice in the first week or so, but since then I’ve been as careful as I am with gluten. I’m surprised I haven’t noticed a difference in how I feel, but there are a lot of things that play into that and I might have other food intolerances as well. I’m doing this challenge because I’m curious to see how I’ll react. However, I’m planning on staying dairy-free for a while.
I can’t wait to see what other dairy-free delights are submitted. Though I was excited about the theme, I realized earlier this week that the deadline was almost here, and I didn’t have anything to submit. That’s when I decided to make a dairy-free creamy pasta sauce. The thing I don’t like about this recipe is that it requires using an ingredient that may not be readily available to most people. Maybe it is, I just don’t know. I found Mimiccreme cream substitute at my local health food store. It is gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free, but it does contain nuts. I used the unsweetened variety.
We were very impressed with this cream sauce. My middle son who is not a big cheese fan said that he liked it much better than regular Alfredo sauce. I found the Mimiccreme to be thinner than regular cream, and therefore I added some cornstarch to thicken it up. This is a very simple and versatile recipe, and I hope you feel free to play around with it.
Dairy-Free Cream Sauce
- 3 Tb. coconut oil
- 3 Tb. olive oil
- 1 1/2 c. Mimiccreme (unsweetened)
- 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
- 1 tsp. Italian seasoning
- 1 Tb. corn starch
- 3 Tb. cold water
- salt & pepper to taste
In a large skillet, heat the coconut oil until melted. Add the olive oil, Mimiccreme, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning. Heat and stir until hot. In a small bowl or cup, stir together the corn starch and cold water. Add to the skillet and stir to combine. Heat and stir until bubbly and slightly thickened. Stir in salt and pepper to taste. Mine looked like this:
At this point, you can put it on pasta or whatever you like, or you can add more to it. I added ground beef that I had cooked and frozen. I added a lot for two reasons. One, I was cleaning out my freezer and it needed to be used. Two, my oldest son has a summer job where he is physically active and works long, hot hours. He comes home very hungry and consumes large quantities of food. So after adding meat, mine looked like this:
Afterwards, I wished I had not put so much meat in and just saved the extra for my son to add to his, but once it was in there I couldn’t do much about it. I would like to make this sauce again and just enjoy the sauce by itself on pasta. It really was good.
Shrimp with Orzo in Tomato Sauce
If the current oil spill continues more than 50 days, it would be the worst oil spill in the U.S history. This was the article I heard a month ago. Today is the 51st day after the oil spill started. It is already the worst oil spill in the U.S. history. Yet, no one knows when the spill stops. Depressing.
The shrimp dish I made before the oil spill was Shrimp with Orzo in Tomato Sauce. It was so delicious because of the tasty and big shrimps from the Gulf. But now it makes me very sad since many of the shrimp beds in the Gulf are destroyed…
Italian pasta sauce
8 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large (75 grams) onion, chopped
1 pouch (150 grams) tomato paste
1 can (237 grams) Italian style spaghetti sauce
1 cup water
Sauté garlic and onion. Add remaining ingredients, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 10 minutes
Pour into a sterilized bottle. Cover and seal. Store in the refrigerator.
Add 10 pieces of basil and 2 tbsp snipped parsley for added flavor
Makes 2 ½ cups of 3-day lasting sauce
Imam Baildi (Eggplants with Tomato Sauce)
This dish is originally from Turkey. However, this is also one of the most popular dishes served in Greece. It is also a very familiar dish for my husband. He is native to Greece and was born in northern Greece where the border between Greece and Turkey was just one mile away from his village. Many of the homemade dishes in his village were influenced by Turkish cuisine.
Imam Baildi means “fainting priest” in Turkish. There is an interesting story behind this dish. One day a poor family generously invited a Muslim priest (or imam) for dinner. Then, they served this simple dish for the priest. It was extremely delicious so the priest eventually fainted. Another interpretation is that the priest started pouring lots of olive oil over this dish. Since olive oil was very expensive at that time for poor people like this family, they fainted in agony.
My husband told me a few tips about making this dish. First of all, do not hesitate using lots of olive oil. I mean “lots”. When I first saw him pouring a large amount of olive oil, I almost fainted. Second, use a pinch of cloves, which makes this dish irresistible. Cloves are one of the most essential incent substances in Japan. But personally I have never used or tasted this seasoning in cooking. A touch of this amazing seasoning makes this simple vegetable dish delicious. The priest might have indeed fainted of the extremely rich flavors.
Ingredients:4 eggplants (Holland eggplants)
3 rip tomatoes, diced
1 large onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
½ cup of white wine
¼ cup flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon oregano
1 – 1 ½ cups extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A pinch of cloves
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325 F degrees.
2. Slice the eggplants in half lengthwise. Add plenty of water and a pinch of salt in a large bowl.
4. Heat plenty of olive oil in a large fry pan and fry the eggplants until they become soft. Transfer them to a baking pan.
5. Heat the olive oil in the same fry pan and fry the chopped onion and garlic until they become translucent. Add the tomatoes and tomato paste and stir them well. Add the white wine and stir the mixture well.
6. Season the mixture with salt, freshly ground pepper, oregano and cloves. Turn off the heat and add the parsley and ½ cup of extra virgin olive oil and cover the pan.
7. Pour the tomato mixture over the eggplants. Add ¼ cup of extra virgin olive oil. Bake it in the oven for 50 to 60 minutes.
8. Serve with feta cheese.
Spinach with Tofu and Sweet Sesame Sauce
Since I had a lot of meat during the holiday season, I decided to cook and eat vegetarian food as much as possible. This dish is one of these healthy and delicious vegetarian dishes.
As many of you may know, soybeans are one of the most essential food items in Japanese cuisine. Soy sauce and miso, which are made of soybeans, are primary Japanese seasonings. Tofu is made from coagulating soy milk and it is a very popular food item among not only Japanese people but also health conscious people around the world. Tofu is extremely healthy food. It is rich in tryptophan, manganese, iron and protein.
The taste of tofu is very delicate. I love simply boiled or microwaved tofu with a little bit of grind ginger and ponzu. But if it is too plain for you, try this dish. Delicious grind sesame mixture and spinach enhance the tofu flavor.
Ingredients:
1 bunch of spinach
150g of soft tofu
3 tablespoons of roasted sesame seeds
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of mirin (sweet rice wine with a low alcohol content)
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
Directions:
1. Steam or boil the spinach until they become tender.
2. Drain the spinach well and cut the spinach into about an inch long.
3. Grind the roasted sesame seeds very well using a Japanese mortar and pestle (or regular mortar and pestle). Add the soy sauce, mirin and sugar. Mix them well.
4. Place the tofu on a plate and microwave briefly until well warmed. Drain the tofu. Smash it and add into the soy sauce mixture. Stir them well.
