Beringela Parmagiana - Eggplant Parmigiana

Beringela is the Portuguese for aubergine. What is aubergine? Well, here in the US it is called eggplant, because in the 18th century some cultivated varieties resembled yellow goose eggs.

The keys to really good eggplant parmigiana are 1) getting the eggplant nice and tender
and then, 2) a tasty sauce.

For the eggplant, bake it first alone on a cookie sheet with a little olive oil until the flesh is pretty soft and browned. There are two tricks here, first, the baking softens and browns the eggplant, and second is that a little olive oil flavors the eqqplant. You've probably noticed before that you can soak eggplant in olive oil and it soaks up a huge amount. So, use that to control the amount of olive oil, and just put in enough to give it a nice flavor but not too much so the dish is too rich. You can do this entirely to your taste.

The sauce used can be the same as my favorite Home Made Pasta Sauce recipe, and you can leave the tomatoes a little chunkier if you want a little more texture. Make a lot of sauce, and then whatever is not used for the eggplant can be saved and used later for a pasta dinner.

Ingredients:
- Eggplants, about 2 medium ones will do
- Use the sauce recipe mentioned above... if you are in a hurry a good jar of sauce will work of course
- hard parmigiana cheese
- breadcrumbs
- oregano (fresh is best)
- Olive oil

Procedure for the eggplant:
- Slice the eggplant into 1cm thick round slices, then slice the rounds in half
- spread out a few tablespoons of olive oil on a cookie sheet and rub both sides of the eggplant in the oil, getting a little on each side. They don't have to be soaked, just covered a bit. Adjust the olive oil to taste - the eggplant will soak this up and you'll be eating it, if you like a lot of olive oil, then use a lot... careful it can get too rich though.
- Bake the eggplant at 375 for about 20-30 minutes until it is dark brown and soft. You can flip it if desired midway.

Assembling & Baking the Eggplant Parmigiana:
- Put a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a baking dish
- Put a layer of eggplant
- Put a layer of grated parmigiana cheese
- Repeat for at least 3 layers, finish the top with a little sauce and parmigiana cheese
- Toss breadcrumbs in olive oil and some chopped fresh oregano, then spread this on top. If you don't have fresh oregano, use dried oregano sparingly, it can be strong... if you have fresh, use can use alot
- Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, it will be bubbly and brown on top

Variation with mushrooms:

I also like to add cogumelo, which is portuguese for mushroom. The mushrooms I like are Shiitake, because they have a nutty flavor and are very meaty. Any mushrooms would be nice though.

The way to add these is to slice the mushrooms thin and saute them separately until they are cooked pretty well, then layer them along with the sauce and cheese. Very simple addition to this dish that can add another very nice flavor and texture.

Limoncello Batch #17

Limoncello is a variation of Lemoncello with limes instead of lemons. I've tried it a few times and it's a bit more difficult to make because the limes have a more pronounced 'bitterness' and need some work getting the amount of syrup right. If you have a favorite 'family' lemoncello recipe, it probably won't come out perfect first try w/limes. We found the secret in making good limoncello was in making a very concentrated syrup.

Ingredients:
- A dozen limes
- 750ml Everclear
- White sugar
- Distilled water

Procedure:
- Grate the green part of the peel off the limes, careful not to get any white. Use a cheese grater.
- Put the grated lime peels in a jar with the Everclear. This process is called 'macerating' by the way. The limes need to sit in here for a while, let them soak for about a month, gently stirring the jar every few days. Keep it in a cool dark place. The color of the liquid is amazingly beautiful!
- When ready, pour the liquid off through a strainer. You can use coffee filters for this. Usually I strain it through the filters a couple times.
- Boil the sugar in the water. OK, here is the secret amount: 2 cups sugar to 2 cups water. Boil a few minutes and let cool. It will be nice and thick and syrup-y. Let is cool to room temp before using.
- Pour most of the syrup into the lime extract, saving about 1/2 cup. Give it a taste, if it is still bitter, add a little more syrup. The syrup is very concentrated, so you can control the sweetness of your limoncello quite a bit by small amounts of syrup. Just get it how you like it. I suppose you could even make more syrup if you want it sweeter.
- Put this in the freezer, within a day or so it gets nice and thick and ready to drink.
- There is one more step if you are a perfectionist. After a week or so in the freezer, the limoncello will develop some black specs. Traditional Lemoncello (with lemons instead of limes) doesn't do this, and Im not sure why, but of course the only thing it can be is the difference between lemons and limes. So, if you want it to be nice and clear, you can filter it one more time through a coffee filter, and put it back in the freezer.

Some notes:
As you can tell from the name "Batch 17", it took a while to get this recipe right. I learned a lot of tricks. For example, many recipes call for Vodka instead of the more expensive and harder to find Everclear - really the Everclear is much better. Also, the sugar water ratio is very important - I learned that making a very concentrated syrup, with equal amounts of water and sugar, made the lime flavors stand out more because you need much less syrup to get to the proper sweetness.

Gnocchi

Ingredients:
- 3 pounds russet potatoes
- 2 cups flour
- 1 egg

Procedure:
- The most important thing is to get organized, because when the potatoes are done and it's time to mix and cook them, it gets hectic
- Don't peel the potatoes; boil them until done. If they are big, expect 45+ minutes. Test them with a fork, they need to be pretty tender.
- Take the potatoes out of the water and let them cool until they are just cool enough to work with your hands.
- Peel the potatoes, and on a big workspace, mash them with your hands. Mix in 2 cups of flour gently, form a well in the middle and crack the egg in the well.
- Mix the whole thing with your hands. It will be sticky, when well mixed and the stickiness goes away, they are mostly ready.
- The mixture needs to be kneaded, but not too much. 2 or 3 minutes is ok.
- This is where you need to be extra organized; boil a big pot of water, and fill another big pot with an ice bath.
- Put one batch at a time into the boiling water and boil until they float. This only takes a minute or two. One batch is maybe a dozen gnocchi.
- Take the done, floating gnocchi out and put into the ice bath.
- Repeat until all are done.

The gnocchi are now ready to reheat and eat. A nice way to reheat them is in a pan w/olive oil or butter.

Clams & Gorgonzola

I learned this dish from a great local bistro, Cafe Torre.

Very simple to make, and great flavors from the Gorgonzola cheese.

Ingredients:
- butter
- olive oil
- wine (we used white, see note below*)
- Small clams
- garlic
- tomato
- fresh herbs; basil and/or oregano

Cooking:
- dice the garlic and the tomato
- heat olive oil and butter in a pan (about a tablespoon each is enough)
- simmer the garlic until a little brown and the pan is nice and hot, but not too hot to burn the butter
- toss in the clams, if the pan is hot enough, they will sizzle and open in a couple minutes
- this is a good time to season with salt and pepper
- toss in the diced tomato
- the juice from the clams should keep the pan moist and steamy, let them open in their own juices, then add the wine a little later. How much wine? About a half cup, there should be 1/4 to 1/2 inch in the bottom of the pan
- taste and season w/salt if needed
- the clams will eventually open in a few minutes, they are done any time they are open. You can let them cook a little longer, but not too long or they will get rubbery
- take the clams off the heat and serve in a nice bowl or even right in the pan
- just before serving, crumble some gorgonzola over top. How much? Not too much, a couple tablespoons will do, it is a very strong cheese. You can always add more if you like the strong flavor.
- It is nice to toss some fresh herbs over top; basil or oregano would be nice

* A note about the wine. The flavor of the dish will be strongly affected by the flavor of the wine. Don't use a cheap or old and stale wine, the one I used was just "ok", a better wine will be better. The seasoning and gorgonzola masked the flavors, so in the end it was pretty tasty. However, after this I am embarking on a quest to find a good inexpensive white wine for this dish.