Random Recipes

For the past 2 nights, our dinner has consisted mostly of home grown items. Last night, Joe made some really yummy goat tacos, with red pepper, and onions in corn tortillas. Tonight I made a stew, which honestly didn't look too appetizing, but that turned out to be delicious! Just in case you ever have a garden with eggplant, red pepper, onions, and rosemary, try out this recipe:

3 med. green peppers (1 lb.)
1 med. eggplant (1 lb.)
5 tbsp. salad oil
1 c. thinly sliced onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 (2 lb. 3 oz.) can tomatoes
2 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. dried rosemary leaves
1 bay leaf
:
1 flank steak (2 1/2 lb.)
1 tbsp. salad oil
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tbsp. chopped parsley

1. Prepare peppers and eggplant; wash peppers. Halve; remove seeds and ribs. Cut lengthwise into 1/2 inch wide strips.

2. Wash eggplant. Do not peel. Cut lengthwise into quarters. Slice crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices.

3. In 3 tablespoons hot oil in 5 quart Dutch oven or kettle, saute green peppers, onion, and 1 clove garlic until vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes. Remove to medium bowl.

4. In same kettle, saute eggplant in 2 tablespoons oil, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Return pepper mixture to kettle. Add undrained tomatoes, 2 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, rosemary, and bay leaf; simmer, covered, 30 minutes.

5. Trim excess fat from steak. Wipe steak with damp paper towels. Combine oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and garlic.

6. Place steak on broiler rack; brush with half of oil mixture. Broil, 4 inches from heat, 5 minutes. Turn; brush with remaining oil mixture. Broil 4 to 5 minutes longer.

7. Slice very thinly on the diagonal and across the grain. Add to vegetable mixture. Sprinkle with parsley. Makes 8 servings.

Note: If desired, prepare peppers and eggplant day before; refrigerate. Reheat to bubbling just before adding meat.

Whenever I have some random ingredients that I want to use in my dinner, I just go to cooks.com, and do a search. For example: tonight I wanted to use steak (which I had to defrost because we're trying to fix our icemaker), red peppers from the garden, and 2 eggplants from the garden. So my search was simply: steak, eggplant, pepper. Several recipes came up, so I just browsed through them, and picked one that looked good. I have never cooked with eggplant before, and just bought the plant on a whim back in April. When I cut it open, I didn't even know what to look for, to see if it was ripe. So I just assumed it was, and went ahead with cooking. This type of cooking (with the help of online recipe searches), has been very rewarding. Only once or twice have we ended up with a meal that was less than satisfactory. But the majority of the time, we discover a yummy recipe that I'll make over and over again.