Tartine Tuesday: Cream Cheese, Green Olive, and Cracked Pepper Tartines

I have a (fairly) new obsession in my life...

Olives.

It all started with my best friend, Dannielle's arroz con pollo, which she made for me one night while hanging out at her place. Sure, I've had arroz con pollo before; chicken, rice, garlic, saffron... I knew the basic flavors, but never had I had it with green olives. I caught myself picking and eating the olives right out of the pot. I swear to you, I never liked olives before that very moment. I always found them too salty, too briney. But there, they were the ingredient that made the dish truly sing. Literally, my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it (and D, you know it's true!). 

That one night, that one dish... it opened up a whole new section of my palette that I didn't even know existed. From that moment on I was putting olives on and in everything... deviled eggs, lentil salads, gazpacho... and not just green olives, I love them all. I've come to really love the niçoise olives here in France... something Quentin thought might be "too much olive" for me. I eat them by the handful. 

So for this Tartine Tuesday, I'll give you a painfully simple, easy, snack that always quenches my thirst for olives.

Cream Cheese, Green Olive, and Cracked Pepper Tartines

8 slices of baguette, toasted

cream cheese

green olives, pitted and sliced

freshly cracked black pepper (black pepper is key in this recipe, so make sure you use freshly cracked black pepper)

Spread cream cheese over toasted baguette slices. Crack black pepper over top of the cream cheese. Top with sliced green olives. Serves 2(or one super olive-lover like me).

Tartine Tuesday (FAIL): Roasted Eggplant, Mascarpone, and Crispy Shallot Tartines

I seem to have a recurring love/hate relationship with eggplant. 

 

(By the way, this is a FAILED Tartine Tuesday recipe... before you all get your hopes up. Sorry!)

When I was young, I despised eggplant. I can't remember if it was the texture or the flavor... maybe it was a combination of both, but no matter how it was cooked, I couldn't stand it. You could have covered it in chocolate and I probably still wouldn't have eaten it... okay, maybe I would have. But eggplant parmesan, a classic, delicious favorite? I wouldn't touch it. 

It wasn't until just this past year or so that I started to really appreciate eggplant. It all started with my friend Elliott's baba ghanoush. Similar in texture to hummus, which I love, I figured I would give it a try to see if my dislike for eggplant was just me being a baby (pun intended). It was light, creamy, and citrus-y, not bitter and gummy like the eggplant that I remembered from my childhood. From that point on, I felt I would give eggplant a second chance, and see where the relationship lead. 

It think eggplant and I are doomed to be like one of those on-again/off-again sitcom relationships.

In my last post, we were on good terms... cut into cubes and roasted, it was delicious. Today though, a completely different story. 

A week ago I went out to dinner with Quentin and his family to celebrate his Dad's birthday. We went to L'atelier du Parc, a modern French restaurant near the Porte de Versailles in Paris. Now, I am usually one to bring my camera everywhere I go, but that night for some reason I forgot to bring a camera. I even purchased a pocket-sized point and shoot a few months ago to make sure that even on those "inappropriate for DSLR" moments, I had a camera. I am still kicking myself in the ass for it.

I won't go into the entire experience in this post... as it would take quite a long time to write it all (the dinner was amazing). I will though, give you a little bite of what lingered in my head since that night. 

Before our meal was served, the waiters brought us an amuse-bouche. In French, amuse-bouche means "mouth-amuser"... literally, one bite, given by the chef, to give you an opening experience of the restaurant and prepare you for your meal. The waiters brought the amuse-bouche of eggplant and mascarpone cheese to us in shot-glass sized tapered glasses topped with a mesclun leaf (sorry there's no picture of it, *kick*). The creaminess of the mascarpone cheese perfectly accented the eggplant, and the thought of trying to re-create the recipe lingered with me the entire week.

I figured it would be fairly simple; roast the eggplant, add mascarpone, top it with something crunchy... crispy fried shallots. It started out great, I roasted the eggplant, pureed it, pushed it through a sieve to make sure there were no lumps, and mixed it with the mascarpone. I sliced the shallots, tossed them in flour, and fried them to a nice brown crisp. Everything looked good, but looks can be oh-so deceiving.

I can only describe it as "bland baby food topped with baby onion rings". Maybe my younger years of eggplant hating karma were coming back to haunt me?! Maybe I didn't roast the eggplant long enough. Definitely too much mascarpone. Not enough salt. Should I have added garlic? Ugh. Luckily I only made enough for 1-2 servings. At least it looked nice, and it was edible.

I refuse to let this failed experiment keep me from writing off eggplant from my grocery lists. I will settle the score. So far: Eggplant-1, Katrina-1. Bring it.

Drunken Pasta with Roasted Eggplant and Tomatoes

Uuuuugggh... I am really not feelin' so hot today. Last night was Romain's (our friend who let us stay in his apartment for free for a month) 30th birthday party. Let's just say there was a lot of dancing to 80's music (since Romain was born in 1980), a lot of booze, and a lot of, "This is so AMERICAN!" from Romain's brother, Ben. It was tons of fun, but I woke up this morning with a bruised and throbbing finger, and I can't remember how I hurt it. Thankfully, it's not broken.

Needless to say, today I'm a little cloudy-brained.

Since yesterday was my first time back to Romain's apartment since we left, and we're talking about all things drunk-related, I figured I would do a little reminiscing. I'll share with you one of the things I conjured up while we were squatting Romain's apartment. It starts with a bottle of wine... no, not to cook with (yet), to start drinking. Then there's the roasted eggplant. I threw that in the pot with some pasta, tomatoes, onions, garlic, splash of wine, and topped it all with basil and some French Comté cheese. Comté is one of the most popular cheeses in France. It is a semi-firm cow's milk cheese and has a slightly sweet, nutty flavor, much like Gruyère. By the end of it, you'll be nice and toasted (due to constant drinking of wine while cooking), but it just makes it taste that much better.

Drunken Pasta with Roasted Eggplant and Tomatoes

3/4 lb of fusili pasta

1 medium eggplant, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 pint of cherry tomatoes, halved

1 medium onion, diced

1-2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 cup of red wine (I used a Côte du Rhone, but you can use any red wine you like, just make sure it's a wine you would drink)

2-3 sprigs of fresh basil

a block of Comté cheese

extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut the eggplant into 1/2 inch cubes and place on a baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over the cubes of eggplant and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss together so that all of the eggplant is coated with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for about 25 minutes, occasionally moving pieces around so they brown evenly.

In a large pot, bring pasta water to a boil and add salt and olive oil. Once boiling, add pasta and cook until just al dente, about 2 minutes less than is directed on the package. You can strain the pasta in a colander, just make sure to save 1-2 ladles of pasta water for the end!

In large sauté pan, add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and the minced garlic. Slowly bring the temperature to medium, and once the garlic has infused the oil (about 3-4 minutes) add the onions and sauté until soft and translucent. Add 1/4 cup of red wine and bring the heat to medium-high. Add the halved cherry tomatoes and sauté until softened.

Add the roasted eggplant, pasta, and a ladle or so of the pasta water to the tomato/onion mixture (if your sauté pan is not large enough to hold everything, you can transfer it all into a large pot). Stir over medium heat for a few minutes, just to finish cooking the pasta and let the red wine and pasta water create a tasty sauce. Sprinkle some chopped basil over the hot pasta and stir to let the basil start to wilt. Top with some freshly grated Comté cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Serves 3-4.