Stuffed Pancakes with Eggplant and Ricotta in Tomato Sauce

Stuffed Pancakes with Eggplant and Ricotta in Tomato Sauce

Eggplant aside from whiskers on kittens and raindrops on roses is one of my favourite things. If you too pop eggplant and ricotta rolls as if they were sweets, think that “salata de vinete” with onions is totally acceptable breakfast fare, take second helpings of moussaka, polish off the entire bowl of moutabal yourself when “sharing” mezze and don’t notice that there is no meat in “melanzane parmigiana” then you might like this amalgamation. Beer, eggplant, tomato sauce and Ricotta (or in Romania “Urda” the local whey cheese) in one dish – how can this not taste good?

Its eggplant bonanza time in August so a good time of year to combine over ripe tomatoes into a tomato sauce, the local Romanian “Urda” which is the same stuff as the oh so trendy and oh so overpriced imported Italian ricotta with the bounteous plump purple torpedoes.

Gadgets & Gizmos

A ceramic or glass dish to bake the finished pancakes in – square or rectangular works best.

Timeline & Planning

If you don’t have approx 750ml-1litre of tomato sauce to hand and some crepes then making all from scratch needs a little planning. I actually make the pancakes while the veggies are roasting so that all you need to do is mix the filling, blitz the sauce, assemble and bake. But yes the dish is a bit fiddly so I tend to make batches of tomato sauce and batches of pancakes as both are versatile and useful things.

Ingredients: serves four as a main course

8 pancakes (Crêpes à la bière)

750ml- 1 litre of tomato sauce (Lemon Squeezy Tomato Sauce)

For the filling:

Two Medium size eggplant approx 1kg

300-400g Ricotta (you don’t want all cheese and no eggplant). I recently used “Urda de capra” or goat Urda and the sheep version is fabulous too.

100g parmesan

salt, pepper, nutmeg

How To

Slice the eggplant into thick slices and place on an oiled baking tray lined with aluminium foil. Bake for approximately one hour. The eggplant does need to be cooked and not shoeleathery like so many badly made grilled vegetable side dishes that give grilled eggplant a bad name. Part of eggplant’s allure is that creamy texture when it is properly cooked.

Chop the eggplant roughly into cubes and mash in the cheese and approximately two thirds of the parmesan. I add a little nutmeg, salt and pepper and sometimes a little fresh thyme.

Spoon two good tablespoons of filling onto a pancake and squish it down a bit with the pancake rolled over. This is actually easier than it sounds. Tuck in the ends (although not vital) so the pancakes fit the dish and place in the dish. Cover with tomato sauce and bake.

Pour over the tomato sauce, sprinkle the remaining parmesan on top and bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes until the cheese is nicely browned.

Serve with a green salad and a glass of something cold.

Smoked Tomato Cream Pasta with bacon

Warning: this dish can engender serious feelings of satisfaction and well being.

Cream and tomatoes along with cream and roasted red peppers make dreamy, greedily good comfort food. Think cream of tomato soup, roast red pepper and smoked paprika cream, light and fluffy roast red pepper flan and (yes) cream of tomato ice cream with basil sauce. Now this particular recipe evolved from a surfeit of post ganache making “sweet cream”, a small container of roast tomato sauce in the freezer and a sad looking piece of smoked bacon lurking at the back of the fridge. It was also the day of yet more gruesome dental treatment. Creamy, carbo comfort food was never more deserved.

The disaster of my local supermarket no longer selling real parmesan but instead dubious plastic sachets of ready grated flavoured sawdust was mitigated by finding a piece of manchego (at least this hasn’t been processed into twice the price per kilo powder yet). I thought “Hola! – un poco excuse to play around with some of my precious smoked paprika”. The final serendipitous addition was the bright orange coloured children’s pasta bought by mistake some weeks previously. Of course I wanted to make home made pasta flavoured with carrot or pumpkin puree really I did.

The basic idea here is half thick cream and half a tomato sauce that is not over acidic (curdled cream is not a good thing). So do use a good sauce and do reduce it down first. If it does curdle dont panic – you can rescue it by adding a tablespoon of corn flour / corn starch mushed into milk and simmer it. It wont quite be the same but it will be edible.

Cook your pasta of choice and mix the sauce through. Here I fried the bacon pieces and sprinkled them on top with the cheese. I had some good basil lying around and thought I would throw some on. You can also add the cheese into the sauce but I like the contrast between the sauce and the cheese – up to you.

This is really one of those recipes where quantities do not matter overly (except the cream and tomato ratio). Here is what I think makes a four person serving with the pasta coated not swimming in sauce.

Ingredients

1 onion cut up finely
Smoked paprika (hot or sweet as you prefer)
2- 4 cloves Garlic, Minced
Approx 500ml of tomato sauce (reduce it down so its equal in volume to the cream)
300ml double cream (32%) or “smantana dulce”.
150-200g of smoked bacon/ham that has a bit of fat on it (if you want to impress then crisp up some prosciutto or “jambon crud uscat” but personally I think it’s a shame to destroy the creamy smooth texture which makes these cured hams so special)
Grated Parmesan or other mature cheese that you like or is available like manchego or pecorino
Fresh Basil
400g dry pasta
A glug of martini or if you can find it “noilly prat”

Gadgets & Gizmos

A frying pan or two. A saucepan to cook pasta in. No special kit required really.

How To

Fry the onion and garlic gently until transparent. Add 1 teaspoon of the smoked paprika and stir it gently. Add a slug of the martini until the alcohol has evaporated off. Add your tomato sauce, pepper and salt and if you think the sauce is a bit acidic add a spoon of sugar. Simmer gently until it is reduced almost half – approx 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile…cook pasta according to the instructions on the pack. The children’s carrot and squash only takes 6 minutes – an infantile attention span that I could identify with. Drain the pasta and watch it doesn’t glue itself together.

Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry gently until crispy. Allow enough to keep stealing bits of bacon out of the pan as they cook.

Add the cream to the reduced tomato sauce and when it bubbles through remove from the heat and stir in the pasta gently with a fork. Add cheese into the pasta or reserve and serve on top of the pasta. Sprinkle crispy bacon and torn basil leaves on top artistically. Smile a big smug “I so deserve this” smile.

Serve with a green salad or as I did an orange cherry tomato salad because I saw them in the market and threw all thoughts of colour, taste and texture balance to the wind. We drank supermarket brand beer that was very cold (its August) but a rustic red in winter would be very good too.

Carpatian Trout Ceviche

My first encounter with ceviche proper was on a hitchhiking jaunt to Mexico – happier and safer days then. Every day seemed peppered with ceviche plates or ceviche plates were peppered every day? However I choose to remember it the flavours are front of mind still: bright perfumy cilantro, sweet raw onions, hot chilies, same day fish swimming in lime juice with sometimes tomatoes, sometimes cucumbers, sometimes avocado.

You need really fresh fish to make any kind of ceviche. So when fresh trout presented themselves in the “Cheile Dimbovicoara” deep in the Carpathians (although hard to say who looked more unhappy at the prospect of custom, the owner or the fish themselves) a fresh, light, summery ceviche was a must.

With a seed sown on an inspirational “fish preserving” course in Italy (local fish, orange juice, olive oil marinade served with orange and fennel salad) I was thinking local and locale so used local bounty (robust parsley, fresh red onions, sweet tomatoes and “ardei iute” – hot red peppers).

Gadgets & Gizmos

A sharp knife and a clean chopping board.

Timeline & Planning

This recipe is “fast & fresh” (kind of like the Mexican holiday vibe but heh it was a long time ago….) so you want to be confident that when you plate it, it wont sit around for hours and the fish toughen. Best plan is to marinate the fish (cut into small strips to maximize speed and homogeneity of the “denaturation” process) 1.5-2 hours before you plan to mix in the final ingredients. “Denaturation” is the cooking process that occurs when citrus juice or heat meets fish. The juice method does not kill all bacteria so freshest fish is paramount. Dense fish will need a little longer – salmon will take a little longer than trout. Tuna will take a little longer than salmon and so on.

Ingredients for Carpathian Trout Ceviche for Four as a starter (Two as a main dish)

4 small trout or 8 trout fillets (150g-200g per person for a starter, 250g-300g per person as a main course)
2 lemons juiced
1 chilli chopped
1 small red or white onion
2 tomatoes or a generous handful of cherry tomatoes
a handful of parsley leaves with a small “legatura” of lovage (“leustean”)
salt, pepper and olive oil

How To

First catch your river fresh trout and make sure they have expired before gutting and filleting them. This is not for the faint hearted and indeed one of ours made a break for it and dived back into his pond from the bucket. Alternatively ask your fishmonger to fillet them (mine does). Salmon fillets work wonderfully too (I like to add fresh ginger and lemongrass into the lime “cooking juice”). I like to serve with home made polenta flat breads but a simple potato salad or couscous works brilliantly too. You don’t have to add olive oil but I think it works well in this version.

Slice the trout carefully into strips, cutting into the fish on a diagonal. Lay the strips in a glass or ceramic dish and pour over the lemon juice, chili and onion. Cover and leave in the fridge for an hour. Check all the fish is in contact with the lemon juice and rearrange the strips if you need to, leave for another hour.

Add halved cherry tomatoes, a generous amount of parsley and season with coarse ground pepper and sea salt. Arrange on plates or in bowls and dribble good olive oil over to taste. A good dry Riesling works well as does a Corona with lemon/lime.

IMPROVS & IDEAS

I added julienned celeriac as in January that seemed right – totally love the sweet celeriac with the trout and it worked brilliantly. The Avincis Cramposie Selectionata was great with the dish.