Turkish Braised Eggplant (Engin's Imam Bayildi)
A homemade gelatin dessert without artificial flavors and synthetic dyes is a great thing that almost nobody gets to experience anymore. It is simple - a good fruit juice jelled with unflavored gelatin.
A fruity Spanish olive oil, preferably from Andalusia, is important, as is a good sherry vinegar, preferably aged. Both can be found at specialty groceries or mail-ordered. If you can spare the time, garnish the gazpacho with tiny bread croutons fried in olive oil.
Ingredients
These supions, as small cuttlefish are called in the South of France, are neither battered nor deep-fried, as fried calamari typically are in the United States, but instead lightly floured and pan-fried in shallow oil. It therefore becomes necessary to sweat out the water from the squid before those liquids can dilute the hot oil. This process adds to the cooking time and thus the risk of tough squid. Although extremely tender pan-fried calamari may prove an elusive goal, I discovered that cutting the squid into small pieces rather than rings produces a far less chewy outcome.
Clear-steaming, otherwise known as double-boiling, is a simple technique used by Chinese cooks where a food is cooked slowly within a closed container. The result is a very clear, intense broth.
Ravioli and macaroni are medieval Italian inventions, at the time so labor-intensive and expensive that only the rich could afford them. Macaroni such as penne was made in those days by rolling dough around a stick and drying it in the sun. Making pasta dough and ravioli is still time-consuming, so in this modern version of a ravioli recipe from the Middle Ages, I prepare the yummy filling ingredients as small meat patties and serve the patties in a golden medieval saffron sauce with store-bought pasta. The taste is just as spectacular, but with a fraction of the effort.
Here winter carrots, cut into thick strips, are slow-cooked in their own moisture until swollen, succulent, and flavorful. The vivid taste of the carrots, the aroma of the olives, and the pungency of the thyme make this a great accompaniment to meat or poultry.
The canned-soup-with-stuff casserole in general became an American classic in the early part of the twentieth century, thanks to the recipes created and publicized by the Campbell Soup Company. In 1955 Campbell hit the jackpot—creating the most popular casserole of all time, the classic Green Bean Bake, made with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and topped with fried onions from a can. Things don't become classics because they're bad—and the combination of ingredients in this dish is really quite delicious. That's not to say that a tweak or two can't improve it. Try the following version with fresh-fried shallots and dried tarragon thrown into the mix. It's irresistible! This version respects the fifties taste but is so much brighter and more layered in flavor. The soy sauce, by the way, was part of the original recipe.