Monday, March 31, 2008

Spontaneous Italian

Sometimes I get the urge to cook. Especially with a newly purchased cookware set; the urge strikes hard. Unfortunately, my kitchen was a bit distraught after the notorious crane incident of March 2008 (yup, that was my building) and I had to put my sautéing crave aside and wait till my gas was back on and my oven was reattached in its appropriate place. Lucky for me, all was status-quo this weekend and while the iron was hot, I went for it.

I hadn’t cooked anything Italian in quite some time—trying to watch my carb intake probably has something to do with it; but as I perused the super market on Sunday I started to get some ideas for dinner that night. I knew I wanted protein and I had a yearning for eggplant (surprise, surprise). I wanted to do something a little different than just layer aubergine and chicken with some tomatoes and I started to think a little carefully. After I found my eggplant, I found a bottle of capers and thought- “What if I mix this with some low-fat ricotta and a few other key ingredient and use this to layer the two?” Eggplant rollatini meets chicken parmesan.

Back at my apartment, I dipped the chicken in egg whites and dusted the breasts with bread crumbs. I put the breast in a pan with extra-virgin olive oil for 2 minutes on each side and place them in a casserole dish lined with tomato sauce. Next came the eggplant, which I sliced length wise and salted. That too, went into the oil panned for a couple minutes on each side. The lower the heat, the less it burns and the crisper it gets. While the eggplants were in the pan, I made my ricotta mixture. I used some eggwhites to thin out the cheese; added Italian season, garlic powder, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and then of course my capers and slice tomato for an extra touch. Fresh basil would’ve been great in this but sorry for me, I forgot to purchase! (I need one of those basil window plants ha).

I put some more tomato sauce on top of the chicken for more flavor and then spooned some of the ricotta mixture to each breast topped each piece with an eggplant slice and then put a thin layer of sauce on top of that as well. For show- I sprinkled a little grated cheese on the top and put a few more capers in the center of each eggplant slice.

The dish came out pretty good and definitely satiates an appetite for Italian… as well as my pining to cook!

If you’d like to replicate- here’s a list of ingredients (measurements were improvised so had to say):

Thinly-sliced skinless Chicken breasts
Eggplant
Tomatoes
Breadcrumbs (with Italian seasoning in it)
Parmesan cheese (or Peccorino-Romano)
Egg Whites
EVOO
Tomato Sauce
Capers
Garlic Powder
Italian Seasoning
Fresh Basil (best)
Salt and Pepper
Part-skim Ricotta Cheese
Shredded Cheese (Mozzarella)—optional

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I grew up in faraway Texas where food was cheap and plentiful but not gourmet. So Italian was not one of those foods available in its original form and taste -- as it is meant to be. Living in NYC it took me a long time to come over to the Italian side of things. And maybe I am finally there. I've been ordering takeout from this place called Gnocco to Go and they're quite good... East 10th St between A/B.

J

Anonymous said...

Hey are you a fan of The Minimalist columnist, Mark Bittman, of NYT? He writes that column for the Wednesday Dining In section.. J