Linguine with Zucchini, Caprese Salad, and Garlic Bread

I decided to try one of my cookbooks I hadn't tried before. It's called Student's Vegetarian Cookbook: Quick, Easy, Cheap, and Tasty Vegetarian Recipes. It has recipes for 1-2 servings that are easy and low budget. I selected Pasta with Zucchini and Basil because we had an extra zucchini in the fridge. I also added a few other items we had in the fridge and doubled it to serve 2. Below is the recipe with my modifications.

Linguine with Zucchini, Peppers, Red Onion, and Basil

1/3 lb uncooked linguine

2 tbsp olive oil

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 large zucchini sliced 1/2" and quartered

3 mini sweet peppers, diced into 1/2" squares

1/4 red onion, largely diced

1 1/2 tbsp basil

salt and pepper

1 lemon juiced

grated parmesan cheese

1. Bring a covered pot of water to a rapid boil. Stir in the pasta and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat to medium but maintain a simmer. Cook until pasta is al dente, start checking about 4 minutes before cook time on the box.

2. While the pasta cooks, heat oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, zucchini, peppers, onion, and basil. Quickly fry until the zucchini begins to brown, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the lemon juice and stir, remove from heat.

3. When the pasta is al dente, drain it (reserve some cooking liquid). Place the hot pasta in a warm bowl, top with zucchini veggie mixture, and grated parmesan. Add a few tbsp reserved water to pasta. Toss lightly. Salt and pepper to taste.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to add the correct amount of basil to the dish. The basil brought back from the grocery store was only half usable, and I put it all in the Caprese Salad. I remembered at the end the pasta needed basil too, so I spooned some from the caprese dressing onto the zucchini mixture. I think if I had put the correct amount of basil into the dish, it would have been more flavorful. Also it needed more of a sauce. Next time I would reduce 1 cup of white wine in the zucchini mixture after it was browned. This should add a lot more flavor and liquid. All in all, the dish was mediocre, even with the addition of the peppers and onions (which were delicious!). This is ok because the Caprese Salad turned out amazing!

Caprese Salad

I did not have access to good heirloom tomatoes, so I substituted the most flavorful tomatoes the grocery carries, campari. Fortunately for us, they were on sale! I have been waiting months to see them 2(1 lb packages) for $4 rather than $4-$5 each! I used 1 lb tomatoes and 6 oz of mozzarella for the 2 of us but pretty much used the entire vinaigrette recipe. I didn't measure the oil and vinegar exactly, just kind of poured and stirred until it looked right. I substituted white balsamic vinegar for the red wine and it was a perfect substitution. Alex and I were discussing whether I should follow the recipe, use balsamic, or white balsamic. Alex thought I should use balsamic because of it's sweetness, but I thought it would be too strong and compete with the other flavors. We both thought red wine vinegar is just too boring. I decided to use white balsamic because it is light, but very bright. It worked perfectly and I would use it again and again. I quartered each tomato (it is about the size of a pingpong ball) and cubed the mozzarella into 1/2" cubes. Alex and I almost ate the whole thing! I loved it on garlic bread and by itself. This is definitely a repeat, especially while the campari tomatoes are on sale. If i was still in Orlando, I would definitely go to the Winter Park farmer's market every Saturday to buy the heirloom tomatoes to make this salad every week. They are also wonderful and come in MANY different colors, purple, yellow, orange, green.

Eggplant Crisps with Skordalia and Oven-Dried Tomatoes and Balsamic Roasted Squash

Eggplant Crisps with Skordalia and Oven-Dried Tomatoes

Trying to clean out the fridge, I stumbled on this recipe. all I needed to complete it was eggplant and some herbs. It was a very time consuming recipe (allow almost 3 hours!), but very delicious. Timing is everything...

First, preheat oven and prep garlic, tomatoes, and eggplant. The garlic can roast during the first hour with the tomatoes. since i don't know my oven well yet, I would turn the temp down next time, as it seems to be running very high. My tomatoes were roasted after an hour, not really oven-dried. Soak the eggplant in just enough milk (NOT 4 cups) for the first hour while the tomatoes and garlic roast. Then prep and boil the potatoes, almonds, mix together sans roasted garlic, and set aside. Once garlic is roasted and cooled, it can be mixed in. Then prep the eggplant breading ingredients. check on tomatoes and garlic (should be about an hour, remove garlic if done), and start breading eggplant. While breaded eggplant is resting, prep the other dish you are serving. Alex started frying the eggplant while I did this (he also breaded it, it is useful to have a sous chef!) Take tomatoes out when they are done and start stacking. before serving. I would let it rest in a 200 degree oven to bring everything to temperature.

It was suggested to double the roasted garlic, which I did, but it was waay too garlicky! I couldn't get the taste out even the next morning! A lot of people say this isn't a true skordalia, but it resembles what I have tried at Mykonos, and the soft texture compliments the crunchy eggplant very well. This whole dish has a lot of flavor! We can't wait to eat leftovers! (tonight possibly?) Also I used only 2% milk (what I had on hand) for soaking the eggplant and subbed for the cream in the potatoes. Others have suggested omitting the butter and cream and subbing with olive oil, but since I had milk, that is what I used. Our eggplant did not yield 18 slices, more like 12. There is exactly enough left for us to have one more stack each.

Also we decided to make balsamic roasted squash. I bought 1 large zucchini, 3 small yellow squash, sliced and quartered. Then I diced half a sweet onion. Threw all in a roasting pan with a splash balsamic, olive oil, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper (ended up needing more balsamic at the end, will put in more next time!) and roasted in oven at 350 for about 20 minutes. SO good!

Served with garlic bread, that baked next to squash while it was roasting. If I had two ovens, I could have heated the eggplant through, but we just ate it at room temperature. definitely was an amazing dinner!