Ask Dear Gaby

I love eggplant parmigiana.  It is one of my favorite things to eat.  However, as you know it can be packed with calories:  the eggplant is fried with breadcrumbs and packed with lots of cheeses.  I have taken the classic eggplant parmigiana recipe and got rid of many of the calories.  My version is not fried and breadcrumbs are used only on top.  Although my version has less calories than the original, the flavor is wonderful. You won’t miss a thing except of course, the calories.

Ingredients

• 4 eggplants*cleaned, sliced and drained (see note below)
• 3/4  lbs fresh mozarella (thinly sliced)
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano cheese
• a large bunch of fresh basil (washed and ready to use)
• 3-4 cups freshly prepared tomato sauce (or store bought)
• 2 tbs italian style bread crumbs
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 425° with oven racks  placed in center of oven. Meanwhile, Pat the eggplant slices dry.  Then on lightly oiled non stick baking pans, put the eggplant slices in a single layer in the pans.  Light spray olive oil on the eggplant slices and place in oven for 6-8 minutes.  Take the pans out, flip over the eggplant slices and lightly spray the eggplant with olive oil. Return to oven for another 6-7 minutes.  Remove from oven then cool.

Once cool, take out a medium baking dish (I use pyrex) and lightly spoon some tomato sauce all over bottom of pan to prevent eggplant from sticking when cooking.  Than layer as follows: eggplant slices slightly overlapping , than basil leaves (Make sure there is a leaf on each slice of eggplant) , than mozarella and parmigiana cheeses than a little tomato sauce just enough to cover.  Repeat until  baking dish is full.  You should finish the top with a final layer of eggplant.  On top,  put more sauce, sprinkle some parmigiana cheese, add a few basil leaves and sprinkle some italian style bread crumbs on top. Salt and pepper to taste. (this can be done ahead of time.  Cover and place in refrigerator if not cooking right away).

Preheat oven to 350°. Bake eggplant parmigiana in oven for 30-45 minutes or until sauce is hot and  bubbly. Remove from oven and let it coolk for 15-20 minutes and serve with extra tomato sauce and cheese on the side.  If you serve it right away, it could be liquidy.  If it is, no worries, simply drain it before slicing it.  Mangia!

*Note: Eggplants contain alot of liquid so you should extract as much of the liquid you can before using them in a recipe.First take sliced eggplant, sprinkle salt on the slices and put the slices on a platter with a heavy pot on top in order to extract the liquid.  Let it sit for at least 2 hours. You will be amazed on how much liquid actually is removed from the eggplant. Do not skip this step or your eggplant parmigiana will be watery.

          

Tweet This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Related Links:

• No Related Links

I love meatballs made with ground beef, pork, and veal.  I usually make my meatballs with very lean (95% fat free) sirloin and ground turkey breast meat. However, I have friends who are vegetarian.  So I needed to come up with a vegetarian version.  I ultimately decided on using eggplant since it has such a meaty texture and I substituted that in my recipe for the meat.  Everything else is the same.  However, the meatballs made with eggplant are more fragile, so I cook them separately in a little  tomato sauce and serve over pasta-  These are soooo good, you may even opt to make these even if you are not a vegetarian.

Ingredients

1. 3 eggplants, sliced, oven baked with a little olive oil  at 450°F for 7 minutes on each side.  Then put into a food processor for 1 minute or so to resemble the consistency of a ground meat.
2. Egg Whites (equivalent of 1 egg)
3. 1/3 cup Freshly Grated Parmigiano Cheese
4. 2 cloves of fresh garlic finely minced
5. 2 tbs of Fresh Flat Leaf Italian Parsley chopped
6. 2 tbs of Pignoli Nuts (Pine Nuts)
7. Day Old Bread (about 1/2 baguette per pound of ground meat), crusts removed, dried, and soaked in warm water; Squeeze  the bread to remove the water and leave bread moist.
8. Sea Salt to taste
9. Ground pepper to taste
10. Olive Oil

In a large bowl, combine  the ingredients, 1 through 9,  together,  using your hands.  Form into little meatballs about 2 inches in diameter.   Heat up the olive oil in pan over medium heat.  When the olive oil is hot, add the meatballs, turning occasionally in order to brown on all sides.  Than lower heat, and cook meatballs for about 4 minutes more or until cooked all the way through.   Freeze or serve with your favorite tomato sauce.

Note: You may also consider putting a small cube of mozarella cheese in the middle of the eggplant meatball before putting into the pan to cook. Follow instructions above for cooking.  Serve with tomato sauce.  Great as an appetizer.

          

Tweet This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Related Links:

• No Related Links

I love meatballs made with ground beef, pork, and veal.  My mother use to make them exactly that way.  To the meat, she would add day old bread made into bread crumbs,  fresh Italian parsley,  freshly grated cheese , eggs, salt and pepper.  Than she would brown them in olive oil and finish cooking them in her homemade tomato sauce.

Then in an effort to make Italian meatballs healthier and of course avoid the beef, I saw recipes using ground turkey instead of beef, veal and pork.  Not quite the same as the real thing– but they were pretty good.  Now I have taken it a step further to provide more flavor but not the additional calories. Pignoli Nuts (Pine Nuts)  is a very traditional ingredient for Meatballs from Napoli.  They  add incredible flavor and texture to the meatballs.

Ingredients

1. Equal parts of Ground Turkey Breast, Ground Turkey Dark meat, and Lean Ground Sirloin
2. Egg Whites (equivalent of 1 egg) per pound of ground meat
3. 1/4 cup Freshly Grated Parmigiano Cheese per pound of ground meat
4. 2 cloves of fresh garlic finely minced per pound of ground meat
5. 2 tbs of Fresh Flat Leaf Italian Parsley chopped
6. 2 tbs of Pignoli Nuts (Pine Nuts)
7. Day Old Bread (about 1/2 baguette per pound of ground meat), crusts removed, dried, and soaked in warm water; Squeeze  the bread to remove the water and leave bread moist.
8. Sea Salt to taste
9. Ground pepper to taste
10. Olive Oil

In a large bowl, combine  the ingredients, 1 through 9,  together,  using your hands.  Form into little meatballs about 2 inches in diameter.   Heat up the olive oil in pan over medium heat.  When the olive oil is hot, add the meatballs, turning occasionally in order to brown on all sides.  Than lower heat, and cook meatballs for about 10 minutes more or until cooked all the way through.   Freeze or serve with your favorite tomato sauce.

          

Tweet This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Related Links:

• No Related Links

We always have oven roasted tomatoes in our home. We love eating them as a snack on top of a pita chip or crostini, putting them in a salad, or adding them on top of pizza.  We serve these quite often to our guests who are always amazed at how wonderful they taste.  They cannot believe it is simply a tomato, oven baked with some spicing.

We usually serve this as a hor d’oeuvre when we are entertaining.  This dish is healthy, low in calories and your friends that are vegetarian will be thankful that you prepared something special for them.

I like to make these on a weekend or in the early evening.  Our home smells amazing when the tomatoes are cooking in the oven.  I have seen many recipes for oven baked tomatoes but in my opinion they do not taste as nice as these.  The trick is too cook them slowly.  Yes,  it takes several hours to prepare these savory treats, but I promise you, they will soon be a favorite in your home.  Try making it and let me know how it tasted.  Feel free to email me if you have any questions on this recipe.

Mangia!

DG

Slow Oven Roasted Roma Tomatoes

Ingredients

• 3-4 pounds of Roma tomatoes (approximately 13-15 tomatoes)
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 15+ medium cloves of garlic peeled and minced
• Salt to tast (approximately1 ½ tsp)
• Ground pepper to taste (approximately 1/8 tsp.)
• Dried seasonings – whatever you have at home-I use Italian seasonings, or oregano, basil, rosemary and thyme-what ever you like.  Enough to make sure each tomato half get some.

Preheat oven to 250°.

Wash and slice tomatoes horizontally. Lay tomatoes flat side by side in large non stick baking tray, open side of tomato facing up. Drizzle olive oil on each of the tomatoes- make sure some goes into the pan itself.

Add garlic to the tomatoes.  Make sure each tomato half gets some garlic- Sprinkle approximately 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper. Again making sure each tomato half gets some.  Add the dried seasonings on each tomato half.

Place tomatoes in the middle of the oven and cook for 5-6 hours. You want the tomatoes a little dried but not as dried as a sundried tomato.  The tomatoes will shrink and the smaller tomatoes may have a little black around the edges.

Remove the tomatoes from the oven and sprinkle the remaining ½ teaspoon of salt or more to your taste. Put tomatoes along with the juices in the pan, scraping up all the bits, into a covered glass pyrex. Refrigerate at least overnight.

To Serve: Tomatoes should be served at room temperature not right out of the refrigerator.It will keep for up to 3 weeks in refrigerator.

Slow Oven Roasted Tomatoes with Crostini

          

Tweet This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Related Links:

• No Related Links