Antipasto literally means “before the meal” in Italian. Starters, hors d’oeurves, appetizers may signify the same thing in other languages but in our case this was the meal. On the eve of Labor Day, hot and humid as usual in Austin, Texas, I decided we should indulge in a few of my favorites things. A little store bought Calabrase salame, delicious fresh mozzerella, and home baked eggplant and tomotoes. We ended up with platter full of color, texture and flavor.
Start with the tomatoes as they take the longest. The recipe for the tomatoes is on this blog under “oven roasted tomatoes”.
After the tomatoes come out of the oven and they are cooling, start the eggplant. This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman at the NY Times.
- Heat the oven to broil. Cut an eggplant in 1/2, chop an onion ad 2 cloves of garlic and put the mixture into the eggplant. Place in the lowest rack from the broil and check on it in 15 minutes or until the eggplant has collapsed. Let it cool, scoop out the eggplant, onion and garlic and add about 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt. Mix it up and add some garlic powder, salt, pepper and lemon. Season to taste! Delicious, simple and rustic!
Once a month I get together with 10 or so brilliant, witty and beautiful womem to discuss a book that we’ve read. We all bring wine and or an appetizer and some of the most delicious desserts I’ve ever tasted. This month it’s at my house so I’m serving an olive plate and roma tomatoes. I baked the tomatoes slowly for hours and then added some buffalo mozzerella and fresh basil. This is a good recipe for store bought tomatoes that don’t always have a lot of flavor. It’s kind of like making them into sun dried tomatoes but in the oven.