For Eggplant Lovers: Fried Eggplant Patties

It's been a very long time since I posted a recipe on this blog. But during the summer I fell in love with a recipe from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, so I wanted to share it. I had a huge crop of eggplants this past summer, and Hazan's "Eggplant Patties with Parsley, Garlic, and Parmesan" was an delicious way to use them. 

 

I did change one aspect of the recipe: in her instructions, Hazan tells us to bake whole eggplants in a 400º oven until tender, about 40 minutes. When I first tried this recipe a year or two ago, that's how I cooked the eggplants and the result, to me, was ho-hum. Instead, I decided to cook the eggplants over an open flame on the stove until they were soft and blackened, as I've cooked them for eggplant salad, recipe here. The result is a deep, smoky flavor that adds tremendous richness to the patties. 

• About 2 pounds eggplant
• 1/2 cup unflavored bread crumbs (I use Panko)
• 3 Tbs parsley, chopped fine
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped very fine (I like lots of garlic; my home-grown cloves are huge)
• 1 egg
• 3 Tbs freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• salt
• freshly ground black papper
• Vegetable oil
• Flour, spread on a plate

1. Cook the eggplants over a direct flame on the stove, turning them until they are charred all over and easily pierced with a two-tined fork.

2. When cool enough to handle, slip off skins, cut eggplant in large pieces––I also remove any large, hard masses of seeds––and place in a colander to drain, at least 15 minutes. You can gently squeeze the eggplant to help it release moisture. 

3.  Finely chop the eggplant and combine in a bowl with bread crumbs, parsley, garlic, egg, parmesan, salt, and pepper. Mix thoroughly. 

4. Shape into small patties around 2 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. Smaller patties give a crispier result. 

5. Put enough vegetable oil in a skillet to come 1/4 inch up the sides (Hazan recommends 1/2 inch, but I use less), and turn the heat to high. When the oil is very hot, turn the patties in the flour on both sides and put into the pan; don't crowd them. When they're nicely browned on one side, turn them. When done, drain on a paper towel-lined pan or plate.  Serve hot or lukewarm.

Enjoy! this makes a lot of patties; the recipe says it serves 4 to 6. I heat my leftovers by putting them in a hot skillet, which maintains the crispmess. 

And if you're interested, another of my favorite ways to prepare eggplant is frying the slices,  I eat them in a pita bread sandwich, recipe here, or use for a pasta sauce with tomatoes, recipe here. 

The Vegetable Garden: Aesthetic and Gustatory Pleasures

I love my vegetable garden. What could be more wonderful than bringing a basket of just-picked vegetables into the house for a meal? It's not just the taste that is important––you'll never buy a potato as good as one that's homegrown––but there is also the act of planting a seed, then watching the seedlings emerge, grow, and bear fruit. Even after almost 30 years of raising vegetables in this place, it still seems a magical process. It's a process of hit and miss––some years a great eggplant crop, another year hardly a one; sometimes insects go on the rampage––but there are always enough successes; it's a process of hope. As Margaret Atwood wrote:

Gardening is not a rational act. 

And May Sarton, in At Seventy: A Journal:

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

Although I've mostly given up on my flower borders, concentrating my energy on growing vegetables, I do plant some flowers amongst the the food crops. It's a delight to look out at my garden and see towering sunflowers, adding good cheer to the scene. These are Lemon Queen, and this plant grew to 8 feet tall this summer. But it's not just the sunflowers that I find beautiful; each vegetable plant has its own aesthetic qualities. Corn tassels pointing into the air are like delicate waving fingers.

  

A sweet pepper plant shows off its dazzling fruit, lovely to see, and to taste. 

Lettuces, with leaves of various shapes radiating from a center, are as beautiful as floral bouquets. 

Red cabbage, a grand leafy vegetable, has gorgeous leaves surrounding a stunning volleyball-sized center. 

                                 

I feel so much satisfaction in looking at my harvested crops. They are a reward of hard work, and I'm happy just contemplating them before eating. These three melons are grown from seed from Fedco Seeds, and are: on the left Alvaro, a Charentais melon; behind is a honeydew, White Honey; and on the right is a delicious hybrid, Sensation. Each of these has a different flavor, and they taste nothing like supermarket melons; oh, they are so much more delicious! 

                                 


The eggplants were very happy this year, probably because of the early heat spell that we had. I love eggplant, and it's a treat to have fresh ones to cook. Two food favorites: fried eggplant sandwiches, and eggplant salad, both family recipes. Click on the links for the recipes. The fried eggplant link has a bonus of a recipe for homemade pita bread. 

                                 

Sungold cherry tomatoes glow on the vine. They are so delicious that I stand and eat them in the garden, popping one after another into my mouth, so they rarely make it into the house. But I can recommend a way of cooking them: toss with olive oil and sauté in a pan until soft and caramelized; simple and quite tasty. 

Another vegetable that barely makes it out of the garden to a plate is corn. The kernels are so tender and sweet that cooking isn't necessary. What a pleasure to stand out in the sun, admiring the plants around me, while eating an ear of corn.

Winter squashes are like hidden gems, nestled under rampant foliage.

Preserving crops is an important part of gardening. Many of my crops will feed me through the winter into next spring. I make jam: rhubarb in the spring, blueberry and raspberry in early summer, and here: green tomato jam––recipe at the link––which is similar to a marmalade. 

I'm grateful for summers with abundant tomatoes, so I'm able to can, and to freeze sauce. I know I sound like a broken record, but home-canned tomatoes are so much more tasty than even the best canned tomatoes you can buy. I favor Juliet paste tomatoes for these purposes. For fresh eating I grow a variety of heirloom tomatoes.

 

I hang some crops to dry in the mudroom, here oat straw––which I'll cut into small pieces and use for tea––and garlic. "Awe", a perfect sentiment in regards to vegetables, is the top of a Bread and Puppet poster. 

 

Also in the mudroom are onions, with a Karl Blossfeldt photograph at the lower right, an image of gourd squash stems.

Finally, a peak inside my chest freezer, which is getting packed to the top with summer produce. You can see broccoli, green beans. zucchini, corn, whole green peppers for stuffing at the upper right, and some homemade bagels (these aren't from the garden; I don't plan to grow wheat). In addition to these ways of saving vegetables, I also have a root cellar where I keep carrots, beets, potatoes, and cabbage once the weather has cooled. 

I think about the winter ahead with satisfaction, when I can ruminate on what I'll eat for lunch or dinner and know that an abundant variety of vegetables is at hand. The pleasure goes beyond good food, into a feeling of life well lived. 

June!

Siberian iris Summer Skies

There have been glorious days this past week, with bright sun, low humidity, and perfect temperatures for spring. As I walked around my garden, admiring all the flowering plants, I kept singing to myself June is bustin' out all over..., that wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein song from Carousel: 

June is bustin' out all over
The feelin' is gettin' so intense
That the young Virginia creepers
Have been huggin' the bejeepers
Outta all the mornin' glories on the fence!
Because it's June!

The flowers in my garden are at their height this month. I look out the back kitchen window and see a mass of the perfectly named Summer Skies iris, with pale blue and white petals floating above green. 

Peony Charlie's White

The peony is the queen of the flower garden.  They have a frothy exuberance, and if I would describe their character, I would say that they have a great generosity of spirit.

Korean lilac Miss Kim, with Swallowtail butterfly

One of the delights of lilacs, aside from their form and delicious scent, is that they are very attractive to swallowtail butterflies. This late-blooming Korean lilac is a butterfly magnet: I see several of them at one time, fluttering around the shrub, landing and sipping, and fluttering and sipping again. 

Wild rose

This small pink rose with a delicate sweet perfume was growing in my backyard when I moved here over 25 years ago. It has since become a lovely large mound, which is dotted with bright color in June. 

Rosa Rugosa

I planted Rosa rugosa along the side wall of my studio, and it has since grown into a wide hedge. When it's blooming in June, the delicious scent wafts into the studio building, and I hear the sound of bees buzzing as they gather pollen. When I watch them inside the flower they seem to be ecstatically wallowing in its center, drunk with pleasure. 

Honeysuckle Dropmore Scarlet

A honeysuckle climbs alongside my front door, blazing orange. I do love the honeysuckles we can grow up here in zone 4, but I miss the ones of my youth, those with scent and taste. During summers at the Jersey shore, we saw masses of the white flowers with a delicious smell. I'll never forget how my father taught us to remove the end of the flower, pulling out the pistil with its drop of nectar. Tasting that was a magical treat. Whenever I see that variety of honeysuckle I'm moved to enact that same ritual. 

Daylily Lemon Lily

The Lemon Lily is the earliest of the daylilies to bloom, and its bright cheerful face is very welcome in June. It too has a lovely scent.

Yellow Flag iris

Another intense yellow flower blooming near the pond is the Yellow Flag iris. It loves wet spots and can grow in standing water. Its form is beautiful, with large drooping petals. It is thought to be a possible model for the design of the fleur-de-lis.

Wild Strawberries

June is also the month for strawberries, both cultivated and wild. The teeny berries have begun to color in my lawn and field.

Cherry tomato Sungold

The garden is producing asparagus, lettuce, and lots of spinach. One thing that I find very exciting is seeing the cherry tomatoes begin to form. Up here in northern Vermont, the growing season is short and tomatoes don't come into full production until August, but here is a sign that I may have ripe Sungolds in 3 weeks or so, depending on the weather. Events like this are what keep me gardening. 

There is a famous Henry James quote about a season: 

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the most beautiful words in the English language.

I would like to add to that "June day, June day..."

 

Growth, Decay, Growth

Early spring: the time of year when I spend most of my time in the vegetable garden, preparing rows, planting seeds and home-grown seedlings, weeding and weeding again. It is also a time when I am struck with wonder at the miracle of it all: the seeds germinating, the growth patterns, the yearly emergence of asparagus spears, the delicious fruits and vegetables I'm able to grow. 

 

Although I do understand––a little––about DNA, it still seems remarkable that this teeny broccoli seed, put in soil and watered, will grow into the broccoli plant in the first photo; it is mind-boggling to think about it.

These more recognizable seeds of corn will grow into six foot tall plants. Of course other life forms, including Homo sapiens, have tiny beginnings, all wondrous. 

Working in the garden, and walking in the woods,  also reminds me that decay has a major role in the life cycle. A compost pile is a clear lesson in how scraps of food and plant remains can be transformed over time...

,,,,into a nutrient rich soil supplement.

In a more natural way, years of decaying plant material creates a forest floor welcoming to new plants and trees. 

Over a long period of time I've seen an old pile of logs become more and more part of the forest floor, covered with mosses and lichen, small plants, and young trees; it is now a mound of new green growth, softened in outline.

The plant-covered pile of logs above began just like this one, and I expect that in several years these bare dead logs will be covered with plant life.

Decaying tree stumps are also hospitable to new plants, which create a lively mix of greens, and rich textures.

Many mushrooms grow on dead wood, such as these hemlock varnish shelf mushrooms brightening a tree stump. 

Decaying trees support more than other members of the plant family, and fungi: when I see wood chips scattered over the forest floor, I look for the telltale holes made by pileated woodpeckers drilling for insects. I've often heard the loud rat-a-tat-tat of these large birds hammering in the woods.

This cycle of life to decay to new life reminds me of John Cage's words: 

The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.                                                       

 

In the Early Spring Vegetable Garden

Egyptian Onions, aka Walking Onions

I love seasons: with each change comes the excitement of the new. Even though spring is the same year after year, it feels as though it's never happened before. As soon as the garden is dry enough to walk through without sinking into mud, my first chore is to go out with a bucket of small stakes and a tape measure and mark out the rows. I am thrilled to watch the new growth, and especially gratifying with food crops. One of the first plants I can harvest are Egyptian onions, which I snip and add to salads and other dishes. Today I added some to my lunchtime coleslaw, using a cabbage that I harvested last fall. 

Garlic

Garlic bulbs are planted in the fall, and I cover them with a hay mulch. In early spring, I gently move aside the mulch to see if the shoots have emerged. It's an announcement of the start of garden season when those green leaves rise up.

Sorrel

The tiny leaves of sorrel have begun to grow. There are several recipes that I love that use sorrel; I'm fond of its tart flavor. There's a sorrel/onion tart, cream of sorrel soup, potato-sorrel soup.

Chives

Chives are another handy herb to have in the garden.

Cold Frame

My hand-made cold frame is rather rickety and crude, but it does the job asked of it. When the soil dries enough to plant, my first sowing of seed is arugula and lettuce in the cold frame. They are very hardy, and the structure keeps it warmer inside to encourage growth during these cool days.

Arugula seedlings

And today I was so happy to see some tiny new arugula seedlings popping up, from a March 24th planting. 

Pea Stakes

I'm getting ready to plant peas: the stakes are placed, and next I'll put up the fencing, for which I use chicken wire. The three taller stakes––with added height from taped-on broom handles––are for snap peas, which are vigorous climbersl. I love the description for planting peas and spinach: "as soon as the ground can be worked". A handful of soil, squeezed between the fingers, should break apart when your hand is opened and not stick together in a muddy clump. A too-wet soil will rot the seeds. 

Rhubarb

Rhubarb plants grow to an enormous size so are situated outside the perimeter of the garden. Although we treat rhubarb as a fruit, it's actually a vegetable, so is appropriately included in this post.  What I most love to make with rhubarb is jam, deliciously tart and sweet. 

The first spring vegetable that will appear will be perennial asparagus, but I have to be patient until early to mid May before that tasty treat appears. I have to admit that I've let my flower gardens go to rack and ruin, letting the plants fight it out with the weeds, but my vegetable garden gives me such deep satisfaction that I hope I never have to give it up. 

The Intense Pleasure of the Early Spring Garden

How glorious it is to be outdoors in weather that is finally sunny and mild, and to begin to work in the vegetable garden! It is beautiful to see the early growth of bulbs planted last fall: tulips and garlic. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction looking at them, and this feeling is especially keen when there is so little evidence thus far of growth, except for the Egyptian onions and the robust weeds.

My first job was to march around the garden with my wheel hoe, slicing off the many weeds that spread across the soil. I then raked them up into piles and carted them off as fill in the various holes left during the winter by the road crew. I love the spare look of the early garden; it's the look of promise.

While I worked the wood frogs were singing accompaniment in the pond, making their joyous quacking mating noise. In the video above you can hear the sound. When I first lived here I thought there were ducks on the pond even though I couldn't see them. I was very confused and it took me several days to realize the sound came from frogs: the wood frog.
*If the video doesn't work in the email of this blog post, click on the title of the post above to go to the post online where you can see and hear it.

When I finished neatening up the soil, my next chore was to put up the pea fence. I had planned my rows a few days ago, marking them with small sticks, so now I put up the stakes for the fence––3 feet high for the 25 foot row of shell peas; and 6 feet high, with another foot or so added with broom handles for the 9 feet of sugar snap peas––and then rolled out the chicken wire to attach to it. Planting the peas will be next....and the spinach, which goes in a double row next to the snap peas. You can see the string I use to mark the rows; that's where the spinach will go. These crops are very hardy so can be planted when there's still a chance of hard frost.

Wood frogs weren't the only creatures adding delight to my day; there were also lots of chickadees flitting about, and resting on the chicken wire pea fence. They are friendly little birds. They're attracted to the garden because of the peanut butter I've placed inside aluminum foil packets and wrapped around the garden's electric fence. This is my method to discourage deer and small animals such as woodchucks, raccoons, and skunk, who will get stung if they try to get a taste of that delicious, highly scented treat. But birds hanging on the fence are not grounded, so they don't get a shock. They eventually finish off all the peanut butter and I have to replace it, but I don't begrudge them their nice little meal.

Another early spring chore is to finish up the compost pile I was building and start another one; I have three going: one that's cooking, one I'm building, and one that I'm using. I put a layer of soil over the one that will be cooking, then some hay, and I then cover it all with chicken wire because I have a problem with skunks getting in the compost and tossing it about. This is another satisfying aspect of the garden: turning food and garden waste into rich fertilizer and soil amendment for the newly growing plants.

The first greens from the garden are these perennial Egyptian onions; they come up each spring brightly green and with a crisp onion flavor. I cut some for my midday soup and they will flavor my boughten organic dinner salad. The anticipation of the harvests to come is delicious....and in just about another month: asparagus! Working in the sun, smelling the spring air, hearing the frogs and birds, knowing that the work will lead to large harvests of healthy, tasty vegetables: what a life affirming activity!