Veggie Tales: Day 4

Alvin and I made one of our favorites today: Eggplant Pistouille from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Alvin is a real big Julia Child fan.  He has several of her cook books and cooks from it regularly.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm a fan of anyone who uses that much butter in her cooking (but not as much as Paula Dean.  That's too much).  However, this one has no butter in it (and is vegan), but I still approve.

Dehydrating the eggplant

As with almost all of her recipes, eggplant pistouille is time consuming to make, but it tastes great.  Eggplant pistouille is like a variation of ratatouille.  Instead of using zucchini, you use eggplant.  We followed the recipe, but instead of serving it as a side as we normally do, we put it on the focaccia that we had the dough from the other day.

Making a paste out of basil and garlic

You'll have to excuse the pictures.  I left my camera at work and all we had was an iPhone.

Just so you leave today with a lesson learned, here is how to easily peel tomatoes:

1. Score the bottom of the tomatoes

2. Boil the tomatoes for 30 seconds

3. Throw the tomatoes in ice water

4. Peel off the skin starting at the bottom of the tomatoes

5. Marvel at how easy that was

Then if your boyfriend is a perfectionist like mine, you take out the tomato seeds.

As far as I'm concerned, eggplant is a wonderful vegetable.  It's filling and meaty and helps me forget I'm eating a vegetable.

Thanks to Julia, dinner was delicious, filling, and fresh.  The focaccia was a good complement to the pistouille, and who isn't a fan of fresh baked bread?

Three more days left!