I didn't have mozzarella cheese to top it with so I sliced up some Fontina; I think the substitution worked out well. I served the dish with spaghetti but I didn't realize how much of the sauce the eggplant would absorb. The unfortunate result was there was not quite enough sauce to coat the noodles as I would have liked. The dish refrigerates well and the flavors were, understandably, even more melded this morning. I'd say this one is a keeper.
Tonight I made two new recipes. The first is a creamy oriental salad dressing that I got from the culinary teacher at Farrington. This one has all the elements I like in a dressing; it's creamy but the vinegar prevents it from being too rich. There's a touch of shoyu and a touch of sesame. Yum. We ate it over a combination of mushrooms, romaine and green lettuce.
The one setback is the dressing is very thick--it's hard to trickle a small amount onto your individual serving; it works better if the whole thing is just tossed together.
The second recipe is from a magazine. It was a first-place winner in some cooking contest and the winner claims it's a recipe her mother got from Hawaii. Naturally it contains pineapple. And coconut. Basically, it's oven-roasted Cornish hens basted with butter then basted with a mixture of the pineapple juice and steak sauce. With all the basting I did, I would expect the Cornish hens to be spectacular. It wasn't. Good but not incredibly outstanding.
The pineapple coconut stuffing, on the other hand, was very good--crushed pineapple mixed with shredded coconut, melted butter and chopped onions then tossed with bread crumbs and salt and pepper. I used some of the mixture in the hens before I tied them shut. The majority went into a baking dish and was heated after the hens came out of the oven. The top got a bit crusty and the rest was moist and fruity. I don't normally like sweet stuffings but I did like this one.
Three recipes down. Many more to go!
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