Carb-free, Guilt-Free, Taste-full Eggplant Pizzas

Ok, this recipe was so delicious that I didn't even stop stuffing my face long enough to take a photo! (Rich took an embarrassing photo of my stuffed face that shall remain unpublished.) Fortunately for me, that gave me the perfect reason to make it again today! I'm a little obsessed...

As I said yesterday, Rich and I are trying to eat healthier for our upcoming vacation(s). Well, I am eating healthier and since I usually make the dinners in this family.... Rich is getting into bikini shape too! Next up, couples waxing. Butt (yup, I did that) as I've mentioned, when I decide to eat healthy, all that I want to eat is pizza. Quite honestly, all that I EVER want to eat EVER is pizza. 

I am a big fan of the Pinterest famous cauliflower crust pizza. It's absolutely delicious, but it is SO much prep work. Anything that requires a food processor is a pain in my ass, which makes me a pain in Rich's... it's a rabbit hole of pain. So, I like to stick to kitchen appliances that require very little cleaning. And while the zucchini pizzas I have seen floating around the internet look really yummy, they are way to small. I mean, I need to mush two of them together to make them "bite size!"  So, no. Then, I remembered Julia Child's eggplant pizzas! 

Tranches d'aubergine a italienne. A' perfecto is what I call them. They are so easy and so delicious!I actually really dislike eggplant! (Please note that I did not say "hate" eggplant because I save that word for foods like salmon.) But, it's true. Eggplant is not something that I usually reach for in the kitchen. But, I think I have finally found an reason to show it a little love. 

Now, even though this recipe is from Julia Child (after all, the best are other people's), I made this my recipe my own... which you should do, too! I had some extra mushrooms in the fridge that I sautéed and put on top and I also added some kalamata olives and fresh basil. 

Ingredients:
1 large globe eggplant
About 1 tablespoon salt for drawing out excess water from eggplant
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
Fresh basil

Salt and Pepper

Hot red pepper flakes

(Again, you can add more toppings if you want to...)

Method: 
Slice the eggplant into 3/4 inch thick slices. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for about 30 minutes to draw out the excess water that makes eggplant have that awful, mushy texture. Wipe the eggplant fry with a paper towel to remove the water and all that salt. Don't skip this step or your pizzas will be wayyyy to salty!

While the eggplant is sitting, you can make the pizza sauce! (Recipe below!)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Brush both sides of each piece of eggplant with olive oil and place on a parchment paper lined backing sheet. Roast the eggplant for about 25 minutes. I flipped the eggplant halfway through baking so that both sides got golden brown. 

Once the eggplant is roasted, top each piece with pizza sauce, grated cheese, and toppings of your choice and bake for another 8 minutes or so until the cheese is melted and slightly browned! Then top each pizza with fresh basil and crushed red pepper flakes! 


For the pizza sauce:
You can totally use your favorite store bought sauce, but if you are feeling fancy here is my recipe.....

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
16 ounces of cherry tomatoes
1 tablespoon water
Salt and pepper

Method:
Heat olive oil in a medium skillet. Add the tomatoes, garlic, and water. Cover and bring to a simmer. 

When the tomatoes are beginning to cook down, about 20 minutes, remove the skins, they should slide off easily, and dispose. Once all of the skins are removed, remove and dispose the garlic cloves and crush the tomatoes until they are smooth. 

Continue cooking, uncovered for another 25 minutes until the liquid has evaporated and the sauce is a deep red color. 

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!!!!

Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta Topped with Buratta Cheese.

 "Buratta" in Italian means butter.
I give you one guess as to why it is so unbelievably delicious.

I have developed a seriously unhealthy obsession with buratta cheese. Unhealthy as in "this has 90 grams of fat and close to 3480 calories" and in the "why can't I eat this 4 times a day?" kind of way.... It's bad, but so so so SO good

Now, I love bruschetta even when it's not topped with an extra 700 calories (do not hold me accountable to that number, I tend to be a little hyperbolic....please see above nutrition "facts" ) So, obviously add some creamy cheese and we are seriously in business.

Ingredients:
6 slices of good quality rustic ciabatta bread (I am already hungry)
2-4 ripe heirloom tomatoes (I used 3... mine were medium sized)
1 garlic clove, whole
1 clove garlic, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil, plus some for rubbing bread
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar (this is not traditional, but it brings out the flavor of the tomatoes, so I say "why not?")
Several leaves of fresh basil cut into thin slices
Sea Salt
Ground Pepper
Buratta Cheese

Method:
Rub olive oil onto each slice of bread and then rub with the whole garlic clove. Toast in the oven for a few minutes until golden brown. You can also pan fry each slice of bread in a sauté pan on the stove, but I like it better in the oven. It's quicker and you use less oil. In a medium bowl, dice heirloom tomatoes. Add minced garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and basil leaves. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon tomato mixture onto each slice of bread. Slice buratta cheese....well, divide the buratta into messy, gooey pieces..... Place a piece of buratta on top of each piece of bruschetta.

Day 22

I felt a little like Julia Child in class today... If Julia Child had red hair and a terrible cold. Cooking with a nonexistent sense of smell and incompetent taste buds was rather inconvenient, but I trussed my chicken like a champ and was back in bed by 10am.

Oh, Julia. 

Today I learned how to fabricate a chicken. This was actually pretty simple. We started with the whole chicken. We removed the breasts, wings, legs and thighs, and were left with all the edible parts of the chicken plus the bones for stock making. Amazing. 

cornish game hen with glazed vegetables

Ingredients:

Oil

Cornish game hen

Mirapoix- celery, carrots, onions

Garlic

Thyme

Flour

Chicken stock

Bouquet garni- parsley, bay leaf, thyme

Bakers twine to truss

Salt and pepper

Glazed vegetables:

Carrots

Pearl onions

Potato

Turnip

Butter 

Sugar

Water

Method:

Begin by prepping the mirapoix. Season the inside and outside of the hen with salt and pepper and then stuff it with mirapoix and a clove of garlic. I also threw in a sprig of thyme. 

Truss the hen. This is a technique using string to tie the chicken in a way that makes it much more appealing for presentation. It can also aid in even cooking. 

Once your hen is trussed, 'poulet' or brown it in a pan with oil over medium- high heat. Once all sides are browned, add mirapiox to pan, put hen on top, and place in the over at 350 degrees to roast until the temperature reached 165 degrees. This will take about 45 minutes to an hour. 

While the hen is in the oven, prepare your vegetables. In class we had to 'tourne' all of the vegetables. I would never in my right mind do this at home. We then glazed them with butter, sugar, and water in a pan covered with a 'cartouch' until tender. 

When the hen is cooked, remove it from the pan and set aside. To prepare the sauce, 'sange' (or sprinkle) the caramelized mirapoix and juices from the pan with flour. Add chicken stock and bouquet garni and reduce to 'nappe' consistency. Strain. Season. Serve as sauce/gravy with hen and vegetables. 

Day 10

More exams.
120 minutes. 3 soups. French Onion. Creme Dubarry and Consomme.

Consomme is a French technique in which chicken stock is clarified to the point that it is crystal clear and very flavorful.

It is made using egg whites which act as a raft to remove all of the impurities from the stock.
I just wanted to add veggies and noodles to it, but whatever. The French will be French.

Speaking (typing) of the French....

Boeuf Bourguignon

Don't you have the sudden urge to speak like Julia Child?

Mmmm. 

We were craving beef stew in tribute to the weekend's amazing rainy weather and what better than boeuf bourguignon? (I did have to google the spelling....)

Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child

Now, this is no quick run to the market and whip something up kind of meal. It needs to be started about 6 hours before your stomach is eating itself. It takes a long time but is SO worth it. 

We used Julia Child's recipe (as you should) and followed it almost to a 'T.' Now that I actually understand French cooking it is so much fun to go back and cook French recipes with an understanding of what I am doing rather that powering through words on a page. 

The only problem was that the oven broke! We ended up cooking it stove top for 4 hours (covered) and it still turned out wonderful. It is very important to keep an eye on the heat and not let it boil. This was especially true on the stove, as the heat is direct rather than evenly surrounding the dutch oven. 

I did have to add a little bit of roux at the end and do quite a bit of reducing because our sauce did not thicken. I am not sure if this was because we did not braise it properly in the oven, or what, but either way- the meat was tender and the sauce delicious. 

You can find the recipe here: Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child or in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which everyone should have in their kitchen.

Day 9

Today we made Creme Dubarry (Cream of Cauliflower) and Shrimp Bisque.

You know when you go to a restaurant and nothing pops out at you? That was how I felt today in class. Cauliflower soup is OK... Shrimp Bisque is OK....

However, both actually turned out delicious and I HATE shrimp. 

There is really only one thing in culinary school that doesn't get me very excited. (Besides waking up early, washing dishes, and that feeling that I get every time I squeeze into my skinny jeans and they are just a little bit tighter....)

Seafood.

Look, I love white fish. I love lobster. I can do sushi (not looking forward to making it, though....)

However.... peeling shrimp and shucking oysters? Please. This is another one of those times when I would rather say " There's this great new restaurant down the street. Let's go and you can order that and I will order steak." I am just not a fan. No shrimp. No scallops. No clams. Nothing chewy. Nothing fishy. Nothing that resembles something I might step on in the ocean. No, thank you. Period. 

I had to peel and de-vein shrimp in class today. 

I wore gloves.

Yes, I was that girl. 

gross.

Shrimp Bisque:

Fish Fumet (recipe in earlier post)

Fish Stock

Butter

Onion

Carrots

1 pound small shrimps with shells

Tomato paste

Bay leaf

Thyme

Parsley stems

Burnt brandy (FLAMBE!)

White wine

Heavy Cream

Salt and Pepper

That's a lot of ingredients. 

Method:

Put on gloves. Take a deep breath and tell yourself you are not 8 years old. Clean shrimp. Peel. De-vein. Let out a sigh of relief.

Rather than discarding the shrimp shells, put them in the fish stock. Most of the flavor in crustaceans is actually in the shells... so this will give them some time to simmer in the stock and make it extra flavorful.

Make a fish veloute using a blond roux. Veloute is a base sauce composed of roux and fish stock or fish fumet.

Begin to caramelize onions and carrots over medium heat in butter and oil. Using a combination of butter and oil raises the smoke point of the butter, but you still get all of the flavor. (Thank you, Julia Child.)

'Pince' with tomato paste. To 'pince' is to scrape all of the 'suc' or brown "stuff" off the bottom on the pan with a tomato product (in most cases- tomato paste.) This recipe is really not shy on the French terms so far.....

Add shrimpies. 

Add bouquet garni. (bay leaf, thyme, parsley stems)

Add brandy and FLAMBE.

K. Let's take a second to discuss how much fun it is to set things on fire. At our station- we set a lot of things on fire. Parchment paper (opps...) Towels (Amanda) Plastic cups (Julia....) Yes. 

But when you are actually supposed to set things on fire- it's a blast. 

Alcohol is flammable. When you burn the liquid, the alcohol actually burns off and you are left with wonderful, condensed flavors. Flambeing brandy leaves you with flavorful notes of orange and vanilla. 

flambe. 

So. Remove pan from heat. Add brandy and put the pan back on the heat. Step back. Let Brandy cook down to almost dry and then add white wine. Cook down. Remove shrimps and set them aside. Add about a quart of fish veloute. If your soup is still a little thick you can add more fish stock to thin it out. Bring to a simmer. Once you have reached the proper consistency, strain. Bring back up to a slow simmer. 

Chop the shrimps. These will be used just as a garnish. I kept one of mine whole and then chopped up the rest. 

Take soup off heat. Finish with a little bit of cream. Season with salt. Garnish.

Shrimp Bisque

Moving on.

Creme Dubarry

Creme Dubarry:

Butter

Flour

Milk

Cauliflower

Onion

Bay leaf

Cloves

Nutmeg

Salt

Egg yolks

Cream

Method:

Begin with a white roux. I still have not done a post on Roux.... I will. 

Add milk, onion pique (onion stabbed with a bay leaf and cloves) and nutmeg. Bring to simmer and thicken. Add cauliflower and let simmer (very slowly) until the cauliflower is tender. 

Do not boil- it will scald the milk. You may need to add more milk as the soup cooks to keep it from becoming too thick. I had to do this a few times. 

Once the cauliflower in tender, remove onion and bay leaf and puree. A food processor or blender will work great. If the cauliflower is undercooked you will not get a smooth soup. The finished product should be very smooth, not too thick, and no clumps. 

Combine egg yolks and cream. This is called a liaison. It is a thickening agent. 

Make sure your soup is VERY hot and then begin to slowly temper in the liaison to finish the soup.

Season with (a lot) of salt. 

For presentation, I blanched a couple of florets of cauliflower. (Place in boiling water for about 2 minutes, until tender.) Place florets in bowl, pour in soup, and serve very hot. Easy. 

I have A LOT of tupperware in my fridge at the moment.....