Delicious!
Do you know about Delicious? I don’t just mean food that tastes delicious, rather the awesome social bookmarking website Delicious. I discovered Delicious a few weeks ago when I was trying to find a way to organize a list of web resources that I keep for work, but use infrequently. They seemed to clutter up my bookmarks list, and I thought for sure there must be an online way to keep a list of different URLs and tag them with the appropriate topics so you can search for them when you need them. Of course, before I came to this conclusion, lots of smart, web savy people figured this out a long time ago, and that’s exactly what Delicious is about. It solved my work problem, but then I realized how great it would be for keeping track of all those recipes you see, and think “That would be great to try,” but aren’t able to put on your meal plan for the week.
It’s a super way to take a recipe you find on someone’s blog, or in the NY Times, or anywhere else you happen upon yummy things just waiting to be made, and save it for later. I’m tagging recipes with what season they’re good for and what the main produce used in them is, and I’m hoping to develop a whole online archive of recipes that I can just search when we get a particular fruit or vegetable in our CSA that I can’t seem to figure out how to use. But you can use any system that works for you. You can also see what other people are tagging those same articles/recipes/websites, and then you can follow their tagging to see what else other people tagged the same way. It’s pretty fantastic and allows for making some delicious food!
This week, I went back to my growing archives and was pleased to discover two excellent dishes: grilled eggplant salad and spiced peach oatmeal muffins. Amazingly, it seems that I haven’t posted any recipes here for about a month, so I figure I’ll finally redeem myself with two!
The grilled eggplant salad is from the NY Times, which recently had a feature on rice. After I started cooking, I discovered I didn’t actually have jasmine rice like I thought I did, so I just used plain white rice steamed in the standard way. But in the end, it’s the eggplant salad with it’s fresh herbs that’s the star of the show. So I’d definitely do this one again, but I think it’d be just fine to serve it with the standard white or brown rice. I also thought the salad dressing had a little too much lime tang, so I’d suggest trying it as directed in the recipe below, but it’s definitely one to try, here as eggplant and tomatoes are coming in fresh from the garden.
Grilled eggplant salad
Inspired by Martha Rose Shulman’s Steamed Jasmine Rice with Grilled Eggplant Salad, which was inspired by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s “Seductions of Rice”
Heat a grill pan over high heat, or prepare a hot grill.
Slice 1 large globe eggplant in half lengthwise. Slice each half into 1/4 inch slices. Spray both sides of eggplant slices with cooking spray.
Grill eggplant for 6 minutes on each side, until the slices are slightly browned and tender all the way through.
As each batch is done, remove to a bowl. When all of the eggplant has been grilled, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Set aside the bowl for 10 minutes to allow the eggplant to steam as it cools.
Meanwhile, mix together in a small bowl:
4 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 jalapeno pepper, ribbed, seeded, and diced
1/2 - 3/4 teaspoon sugar
Then in a large bowl, combine:
grilled eggplant, coarsely chopped
1 small tomato, diced
1/4 cup of cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup of fresh mint, finely chopped
Toss dressing with eggplant mixture. Set aside for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, add 2 cups of water and 1 cup of white rice to a small saucepan. Turn heat to high, and bring water to boil. Allow the water to boil hard for about 15 seconds, then reduce the heat, cover and cook over very low heat for 15 minutes. Do not lift the lid during this time.
Plate hot rice and top with eggplant salad. Serves 4.
I initially found the oatmeal peach muffin recipe through one of the AllRecipes.com weekly e-mails highlighting summer produce, but I hadn’t had any luck getting peaches at the farmers’ market. So I tucked it aside in Delicious, and pulled it out when I had the luck of getting “cosmetically challenged” peaches from Lyons Farm on the cheap. Although they weren’t perfectly pretty, they were deliciously ripe. The addition of some whole wheat flour and cardamom to the original recipe made them a lovely summer snack.
Spiced oatmeal peach muffins
Adapted from Sal’s recipe on AllRecipes.com
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a large bowl, add 1 teaspoon lemon juice to 1 cup of milk. Let sit 2 minutes.
Add:
1 cup quick cooking oats
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup applesauce
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
In a separate bowl, combine:
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
Stir flour mix into wet ingredients.
Stir in 1 1/2 cups of diced peaches.
Spoon batter into 12-16 greased muffin cups. Bake muffins at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
Let cool for 15 minutes before attempting to remove from muffin cups.
Refrigerate leftover muffins for up to one week.
