A cutlet to spare

Sunday, August 03, 2008

I’ve been trying to eat more vegetarian meals lately.  One thing that becomes obvious when you’re writing about your food intake is just exactly how much meat you’re eating!  And it’s not that I have problems with eating meat - but I feel like maybe I just eat a little too much for my own good.  There are both health and environmental reasons for eating less meat, both of which I am conscious.  And really, it’s so easy to take advantage of the huge amounts of gorgeous locally grown produce in season right now.

Even though I’ve been reducing my meat consumption, it’s not like I’m ever going to be a vegetarian.  I happen to think cows and ducks are pretty tasty, and I have no moral qualms about eating them (veal and foie gras are OK with me, too, for the record).  Since I try to stick to locally grown meat that is ethically and sustainably grown, I worry less about the moral and environmental reasons.  And again, I really like meat.  But this is not a love song about beef, chicken, or lamb - it’s a love song to the vegetarian meal I ate last night.

I made some breaded eggplant cutlets a few weeks ago that I prepped and froze.  Usually I buy up eggplants at some point and make tons of them for over the Winter - they’re great to have on hand for a quick dinner, and they’re easy to make.  I think the most important part is the prep: slice up the eggplant, salt it, and press it a colander for an hour.  The salt draws out the moisture and gives it a meatier, more dense texture.  Dip the eggplant into a bit of egg white, dredge in breadcrumbs, and then bake at 450 degress for about 10 minutes.  Let the cutlets cool and then layer them on wax paper, pop them in a properly labeled freezer bag and freeze them.  Reheating is a snap: bake at 350 degrees for about 10 or 15 minutes.  You can make sandwiches, eggplant parmesan, whatever - all on the fly.

Last night I heated them up and just threw a couple slices of salted heirloom tomatoes on top, and served with sauteed swiss chard with parmesan and new potato and parsley salad.  It was a great dinner, and I didn’t miss the meat at all.

I was also pretty excited about the potato and parsley salad.  Last week’s CSA share included all these super tiny, marble-sized Yukon Gold potatoes, and a few weeks ago I pulled about a dozen of the same potatoes out of my garden (interestingly, I did not grow potatoes this year - they were just leftovers from last year’s potato experiment that went horribly wrong).  So it was just thrilling to find something to do with such tiny potatoes, and it was a great use of the huge amounts of parsley growing like crazy in my garden.

Where it all came from:

eggplant, Lancaster Farm Fresh - 100 miles
egg, Natural Acres - 100 miles
breadcrumbs, made from Le Bus bread - 15 miles
tomatoes, Urban Girls - 29 miles
potatoes, Landisdale Farm - 100 miles and my garden - 0 miles
parsley, my garden - 0 miles
garlic, my garden - 0 miles
swiss chard, Landisdale Farm - 100 miles and my garden - 0 miles
parmesan, Hendricks Farm - 39 miles

not local: olive oil, salt, and pepper