Sheetpan feta with chickpeas, tomatoes, and mushrooms (NYT Cooking)

 Time for another sheetpan recipe. I picked one from the NYT again. I did my shopping at Trader Joe's. Simple ingredients, simple preparation. It all came together quickly.

In a spread of Greek appetizers, or meze, there’s often a warm feta dish like bouyiourdi (baked feta with tomato and hot peppers) or a saganaki (fried cheese). This recipe combines elements of these two classic appetizers into a sheet-pan meal. Softened feta provides a salty, creamy counterpoint to sweet, juicy tomatoes and chickpeas that are sticky from honey and spicy from dried chile. Try this version, then riff wildly: Switch out tomatoes for mini peppers, olives, dates or cauliflower. Swap the hot honey for anchovies, harissa, smoked paprika or turmeric. Eat with pita, grains, salad greens, hummus or yogurt.

 

First, the chickpeas. Roasting them made them less mealy, though not quite crispy. 

As for cheese, though the recipe advises against using feta made from cows' milk, that's what I did. I'm not a big fain of sheep feta. The cows' milk feta (from Trader Joe's) worked just fine. 

 Here's what I put into the oven. I added mushrooms in addition to the tomatoes and left out the tomatoes in one corner of the sheet (my daughter doesn't like tomatoes). It worked just fine. Here's the dish after the bake.

And everything arranged on a plate with some  yogurt and pita chips. It made for a lovely low-effort summer dinner. 8/10.

Week 9: Curried Eggplant With Tomatoes and Basil

Vegetable ingredients: Eggplant, tomatoes, chickpeas.


I feel I'm running out of vegetables that I like. Or at least don't dislike. A student recommended recipes published by the magazine Real Simple, so I gave their website a try. I didn't really find many appealing (to me, anyway) vegetarian recipes. In the end, I decided on Curried Eggplants with Tomatoes and Basil, mainly because I have never cooked a dish with eggplants (I think). Getting adventurous, right?

Ingredients

• 1 cup white basmati rice

• kosher salt and black pepper

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 onion, chopped
(love pre-chopped onions!)

• 2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
(very expensive at Whole Foods, $8 or so, so I settled on a large can of diced tomatoes instead -- not sure if that helped or harmed the dish, but it cut down on prep time) 

• 1 eggplant (about 1 pound, cut into 1/2 inch pieces)

• 1 1/2 teaspoons 
curry powder

• 1  15.5 ounce can chickpeas, rinsed
(it took me a while at Whole Foods to figure out that chickpeas = garbanzo beans, which tells you all you need to know about my culinary talents)

• 1/2 cup fresh basil
(basil really made a difference!)

• 1/4 cup plain low-fat-yogurt, preferably Greek (I used 1/2 cup whole-milk yogurt)

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, combine the rice, 1 ½ cups water, and ½ teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Stir the rice once, cover, and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 18 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 4 to 6 minutes.
3. Stir in the tomatoes, eggplant, curry powder, 1 teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes.
4. Add 2 cups water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until eggplant is tender, 12 to 15 minutes.
5. Stir in the chickpeas and cook just until heated through, about 3 minutes.
6. Remove the vegetables from heat and stir in the basil. Fluff the rice with a fork. Serve the vegetables over the rice with yogurt, if using.

Verdict: 6/10


My family found it "vegetably," but I quite liked it (more than I had expected, eggplants are not really my thing, they look better than they taste). It was easy enough to prepare and would have served 4 (as stated in the recipe). My daughter didn't eat any of it, no, she ate a single chickpea and then frowned. Ah well. We enjoyed the leftovers the next day, when it was more like a stew. I forgot to take a picture, but the recipe website (linked above) has a pretty accurate one. It seems like something one could take to a potluck.