9/02/2008

Thrown together dinner

Tonight I literally took a few things and threw them together hoping it would be edible.

Dice and sauté one onion, garlic clove, and jalapeno.
Add summer squash coins
Add halved cherry tomatoes
Add corn

Salt and pepper and at the end add two spoonfuls of fresh yogurt.

I was a little bit leery but in the end it was great.

Desert: more yogurt with nectarine and my friend john’s cherry jam that he made from cherries in his garden.

9/01/2008

Stratagraphy

I am formerly an anthropologist. Maybe formerly isn’t the best description: I still and will forever identify as an anthropologist. In college as I was studying anthropology I had to take intro to archaeology. You see, archaeology was what got me excited in anthropology in the first place. After spending a summer restoring a 200 year old cemetery in my hometown I was obsessed with archaeology - my friend and I spent every day the summer between Jr. and Sr. year in high school in the grove of trees, cutting down 200 year old weeds, and uncovering different strata, where the tombstones had fallen over and were now buried under dirt. It all started with a summer of what some might call digging up graves.

Though, when I got to college I instantly found that rather than the dead I was more interested in the living: cultural anthropology. Nonetheless, I still had the anthro requirement to take archaeology. The one thing I remember about that class is we had to draw our own stratagraphy. I think I chose a landfill, maybe not I can’t remember.

Well today, I was mulling over what to do with my beautiful eggplant and loads of tomatoes. So I am creating a summer stratagraphy. Each layer is a different fruit and i have used different cooking techniques for each, mixing cooked and fresh elements to this dish

Layer one: A thin soup of roasted tomato sauce: roast tomatoes, puree, sautee onion and garlic, add tomatoes and fresh oregano and a spoonful of pesto
Layer two: A slice of Cherokee purple tomato, lightly roasted in the oven
Layer three: Sliced eggplant, first roasted in oven then grilled on grill pan
Layer four: Goat cheese
Layer five: Fresh green zebra tomato
Layer six: Fresh basil pesto

All skewered with a sprig of rosemary.