Eggplants Are Here, Brown Family Farm Has Mozzarella

Image is courtesy of thekitchn.com

By Tom Freeland, HT.com blogger

I’m making a point of cooking local as much as possible, and for a month have pulled that off.  The word that the Browns were doing mozarella, just as eggplants and summer tomatoes were coming in,  made my cooking this weekend.

First, I made a big batch of tomato sauce, based on Marchella Hazan’s recipe.  I cut three pounds of tomatoes in half, cored many of them, and cooked those for 100 minutes, the first ten covered, then 90 minutes simmering uncovered.  I ran that through a food mill.  Then I put about 3/4 c of olive oil in a sauce pan, added 2/3 c chopped onions, cooked till translucent, then added 2/3 c each of celery and carrots, cooked a couple of minutes, then added the pureed tomatoes, some salt and some sugar and cooked for 20 minutes.

This produced about 5 cups of sauce, which means 5 meals for two.  That will get me through to the point Roma tomatoes become available locally.

I used the the tomato sauce to make eggplant parmigiana.  I dredged slices of eggplant (six of them) in flour, then beaten eggs, then bread crumbs, and then fried them in olive oil until brown on each side.  I put the eggplant slices in a baking dish, spooned the tomato sauce over, then slices of the Browns’s mozzarella, then grated parmesan.

Local ingredients:  Tomato, carrot, onion, eggplant, egg, mozzarella   Non-local:  celery, olive oil, augar, bread crumbs, parmesan.

Read more blog posts by Tom Freeland at his NMissCommentor blog page.