Salad without "bite"
Not everything attempted in the La Mouradde kitchen turned out. I made a beautiful salad with all of the magnificent vegetables and lettuce we got down in the market. The salad was pretty, but the dressing I put together of oil and sherry vinegar was boring. Robin suggested it needed some mustard to give it some bite.
A recipe that didn't work
This year, I've been trying to cook with eggplant because it is a vegetable underused by Americans, it is a staple of Mediterranean cuisine, and besides all that, it is very pretty. I tried to make a Provencal entree of roast eggplant slices, slathered in goat cheese, and covered in diced tomatoes and basil. It was boring. So my whole lunch was boring because both salad and entree were boring.
Eggplant tapenade
with sliced anchovies
I swear though, in France, even the leftovers are better. My college friend and hostess, Robin, took my uneaten eggplant dish, pureed it, and made a delicious eggplant tapenade out of it.
Cèpes for sale at the market
She took our leftover veal roast and put it around a giant cèpe mushroom along with root vegetables and roasted them. I had never even heard of cèpes, but I have since learned from Wikipedia that they go by the name of porcini mushrooms in the States. Still, I don't believe I had ever eaten them fresh.
The giant thing in the middle
is a large cèpe mushroom
surrounded by veal roast, potatoes,
fresh thyme and other spices.
Who doesn't like to unwrap something?
It may look a bit of a mess
straight out of the foil,
but those veal bits and the mushroom were so moist
and the au jus was ambrosial
with the potatoes
The end of another
satisfying meal
at my friend Robin's house.
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