Berenjena a la Andaluza

Tomatoes from the garden
Tomatoes from the garden

How did the eggplant get its name? Maybe the fruit at one time, long before gene splicing, was no bigger that an egg. It is a beautiful plant. The leaves are like giant oak leaves and the flowers are a pretty light purple. And then the fruit is so dramatic and rich looking. I found a simple recipe in a Spanish cookbook that calls for six baby eggplants. I brought three good sized ones up from the garden and cubed them and tossed them with a mortar mixture of cumin, paprika, parsley, garlic and olive oil before baking them on a cookie sheet.

We have a dozen tomatoe plants and each plant has produced at least a dozen tomatoes. Too many to count. We picked a few bags worth and weighed them before making sauce. We had thirty pounds! We threw some of our kale in, a pile of basil and jalapeños from the garden, parsley from our neighbor’s garden, carrots, celery and fifteen or so gloves of garlic. We let it simmer all day and left it on the stove to cool down overnight.

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