Have a recommendation? We'd LOVE to hear it!
Salutations Readers!
Kalamazoo has good food.
Great food, in fact. We have made it our mission to check out all the local eateries one at a time - and more for our own poor memories than any other reason, we'll be chronicling our adventures in food here. And some places float our boats way more than others, which is why we have developed the very scientific five golden forks rating scale. Ok. It is not scientific at all. It is actually quite unscientific. But, it is something. And now, you can search all of our reviews by the forks rating. YAY!

But, wait! There's more!
Kalamazoo Foodies no longer just eat at restaurants then review them. There are recipes posted, some easy, some less easy, all delicious. There are, or will be, book reviews, the new Foodie Movie Review-y which will focus on movies about food or ones that have a lot of beautiful food in them. There are other food musings, and hopefully soon contests and so much more. But, Foodie Friends, it is all about food. Because we love it!
And, we want to hear from you!
We want to hear your comments on our recipes and reviews. We want to know where you love to eat. And, we are looking for GUEST bloggers to broaden our horizons a bit. And, if you haven't found us on Facebook, you should do that too. Like our page for other fun Foodies stuff like photos, polls, and more.

SO KALAMAZOO PATRONS - where do YOU love to eat? Because we'd love to check it out and share our thoughts here. Give us a comment below, and quickly! Our tummies are grumbling in anticipation.

A Note from the Foodies about our typical fair:
So, you may notice as you read our blog that we often order the same thing wherever we go. OK, maybe not quite, but we do often order similar things. Kristin has her caprese salads and mushroom dishes. Kate has her baked goat cheese and things with tofu. Well, readers, we wanted to let you know that this is absolutely intentional. A) We love those things, so why not order what you love? And, B) It is a lot easier to compare apples to apples than it is to compare apples to comquats. So, we like to order similar things to have a good sense of how to compare them. Just wanted to let you in on that little secret. Bon appetit!

Monday, October 15, 2012

Tomato and Eggplant Pie


As my maternity leave drew to a close, I wanted to actually MAKE dinner one night. Not defrost dinner. Or pick up dinner. Make dinner. But, I knew it needed to be something fairly easy. Add to that that we had a bunch of tomatoes, and the result was tomato pie.

I followed the recipe pretty closely the first time, but made some adjustments for round two, and that is what you will find below.

Tomato and Eggplant Pie.

Tomato and Eggplant Pie 
(Adapted from: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/summer-tomato-pie/)

Ingredients:
Single pie crust (I used store bought for now)
5 roma tomatoes, thinly sliced
Salt
1/2 small eggplant, thinly sliced (very thinly sliced!)

5 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup basil, chiffonaded (is that a word? It should be!)
3/4 grated mozzarella or Italian blend cheese
1/2 Parmesan Cheese, freshly grated
Olive oil
Crushed red pepper

How to make it: 
  1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
  2. Press pie crust into a 9" cake pan.
  3. Bake pie crust for 8 to 10 minutes, just until lightly browned.
  4. Reduce oven temp to 350 degrees.
  5. While the pie crust is cooling, prep the tomatoes... place them at the bottom of a large colander and sprinkle with salt. 
    1. Let sit for 10 minutes or so. 
    2. Dab with a paper towel to remove excess moisture.
  6. Now, time to build the pie!
    1. Start with one thin layer of tomatoes on the bottom of the pie crust.
    2. Add a thin layer of eggplant.
    3. Sprinkle with garlic and basil.
    4. Cover with 1/3 of the mozzarella cheese.
    5. Sprinkle with a touch of Parmesan.
    6. Repeat.
    7. Repeat, but this time, put a bunch of Parmesan on there. 
  7. Drizzle the top with olive oil.
  8. Sprinkle with crushed red pepper.
  9. Garnish as you see fit (I added a few tomato slices and some basil leaves). 
  10. Bake for about 30 minutes. You want to see bubbly cheese. 
  11. Remove from oven and let cool about 7-10 minutes (if you can wait that long) before serving. 
  12. Serve and enjoy. 
YUM! A delicious dinner.

Notes: 
  • Seriously, this is pretty easy. And, it is SO GOOD! I added the eggplant the second time to add some omph and omph it added. 
  • I served this with some DELICIOUS chicken sausages (mozzarella and spinach). It was a LOVELY meal.
  • The original recipe suggested that you could do other cheese and herb combinations (Gruyere and fennel, Swiss and dill, etc.). I think there could be some wisdom in that, but I am SUCH a big fan of mozzarella, basil, and garlic, I am not sure I will deviate from that.
  • This keeps surprisingly well. I recommend reheating in the oven, but you can get a few days of fridge time on this one!


Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)