Eat Simply, Eat Well

Healthy recipes & tips to help you live the good life. by Ann Plough

Asparagus Mozzarella Bruschetta w/ Fried Eggs

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Asparagus-mozzarella-bruschettaWe popped into a local restaurant on a long walk last week to check out what they were serving and to see if by any chance they had open spots for Sunday (they didn’t – Mother’s Day was, not surprisingly, sold out). The manager walked us through the special of the month: the Asparagus Week buffet.

As I read down the list, I kept thinking: I can make these at home. Asparagus! Now there’s a seasonal vegetable to take advantage of. Stockmann had asparagus on a special sale, and while our local asparagus isn’t available yet, I bought a couple of bunches and brought it home for kitchen experimentation.

First up were these super simple but ultimately delicious Asparagus Mozzarella Bruschetta. Here’s a dish that is literally 15 minutes from start to finish. Turn your oven on. Shave the asparagus while the oven heats up. Rub garlic on bread and drizzle olive oil. Pop bread in oven. Cook asparagus. Pull bread out. Assemble. Bread back in oven. Fry Eggs. Plate. Serve.

If shaving asparagus into thin ribbons seems like too much work – trust me: it’s worth it. You’ll know exactly why when you take your first bite.

Go get your hands on some asparagus. These are delicious. Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Snack? Take your pick. There’s no time of day when you’d be sad to be sitting in front of this plateful.

Asparagus-mozzarella-bruschetta-egg-com

Asparagus Mozzarella Bruschetta w/ Fried Eggs

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F. Line an oven pan with parchment paper.

  • 4 slices artisan bread; I prefer whole wheat sourdough
  • 1 large garlic clove, peeled and sliced in half
  • olive oil
  • 8 asparagus spears
  • zest of 1/2 lemon
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2-3 grinds fresh black pepper
  • 8-10 basil leaves, julienned
  • 1/2 ball buffala mozzarella, diced
  • 4 organic eggs

Lay the bread out on the pan and rub the surface of each with 1/2 garlic clove (you should use up the entire clove in this process. Drizzle the bread slices with olive oil and place in the hot oven. Set the timer for 5 minutes. If the timer rings before the asparagus is done, check to see if the bread is toasted to a golden brown. If it is, pull the pan from the oven and set aside until you are ready to assemble the bruschetta. (It may need more time: oven temperatures and bread thickness varies, so do check it and put it back in if needed).

Cut the tough ends off of the asparagus spears and discard or save for vegetable broth. Cut off the tips and reserve. Using a vegetable peeler, shave the asparagus spears into long, thin ribbons. Heat a frying pan over medium high heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. Mince the remaining garlic clove half and add it to the pan. Stir briefly until the garlic just begins to brown. Add the asparagus, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper. Cook the asparagus shavings until the just begin to soften. Remove from heat, stir in the basil, and transfer the asparagus to a plate.

Return the pan to the heat and add more oil if needed. Add in the asparagus tips and cook until crispy. Remove the asparagus spears from the pan.

Reduce the heat under the pan to medium. Carefully crack in 4 eggs into the pan. Let the eggs cook briefly until the white just begins to set around the edges. Carefully pour in about 3 tablespoons of water and cover with a lid to steam the eggs.

While the eggs cook, assemble the bruschetta. Divide the buffala mozzarella evenly between the four slices of bread. Arrange the asparagus shavings over the top and arrange two asparagus tips on the top of each bruschetta. Return to oven for 1 minute. By this time, your eggs will be done.

Serve 2 for a main course or 4 as a starter.

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Whole Grains, Kale and Mixed Herb Salad

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Whole Grain, Kale and Mixed Herb Salad

Oh Friday, am I glad to see you. This week has been packed and I’m ready to take a nice long walk in the fading sunlight, come back and kick my feet up, and breathe deeply for a moment.

But first Dinner.

If you been cooking meals all week long, it’s possible that by the end of it you have bits and bobs of leftover portions lingering around on various shelves. Whole grains are one item that I tend to cook extra of at the beginning of the week ‘just in case’ as they take a bit longer to cook than other ingredients do – and having them on hand means that I can get a quick hearty meal on the table with the addition of raw or cooked vegetables and a few other key items. What the easiest thing do when you have a bowl of leftover whole grains? Making a salad is high on my list.

This salad makes the most of a variety of herbs for the fullness of flavor; try these:

  • Basil
  • Mint
  • Cilantro
  • Parsley
  • Dill
  • Fennel (fronds)
  • Tarragon

Feel free to use all four, or mix and match what you have. I happened to have two different types of basil growing on my windowsill, so I used both Genovese basil and lemon basil for this – and I have to say I smiled a bit every time I bit into the citrus-anise note of the lemon basil – a welcome surprised scattered at random throughout the salad. The main thing is to experiment and use what you have – it’s hard to go wrong here, though I wouldn’t recommend Thai basil in this salad.

You can use any whole grain you wish for this. Good examples are:

  • Barley
  • Oat Groats or steel-cut oats
  • Millet
  • Quinoa
  • Brown, Red or Black Rice
  • Spelt grains
  • Kamut/Farro grains
  • Wheat grains or Tabbouleh

Some of these, like Quinoa and Millet cook quickly so you can get them on the stove and then prepare the other ingredients while they cook. You’ll want to make sure your grains are cool (they don’t have to be cold; room temperature is fine) before you add them to the salad for best results.

 Now on to the vegetables: a variety of vegetables adds a broad array of colors, flavors and nutrients, so you can choose what you have on hand or your favorites. Try these:
  • Radish
  • Carrots
  • Kohlrabi
  • Cucumber
  • Zucchini
  • Snap peas
  • Green beans
  • Shelled edamame

I chose to add radish and carrots. Whatever you choose to put into the salad, make sure it’s sliced, grated, or diced really small so that no part of the salad is overly crunchy nor requires too much work to chew. You want this to be an enjoyable experience, not a workout for the jaw muscles!

 And finally, toasted pumpkin seeds and the vinaigrette to pull everything together and all it needs is a quick toss and you can plate it up.
The thing I love about this salad is how flexible and versatile it is. You can use it to clean out the fridge at the end of the week, and then pack it along on a weekend picnic or to a potluck (if you increase the quantities, that is).  If you make it mid-week, it makes the perfect lunch for the office. We’ve also packed this along for car, train and plane rides – since travel food is notoriously abysmal and it’s nice to have your own options along.
Hungry yet? Let’s get chopping!
Whole Grain, Kale and Mixed Herb Salad

Whole Grain, Kale and Mixed Herb Salad

Whole Grain, Kale and Herb Salad

 1. In a large bowl combine:
  • 1 cup cooked whole grains, your choice (see above)
  • 3 cups raw kale, chopped and massaged with hands to soften
  • 2 carrots, shredded
  • 6 radishes, thinly sliced
  • 1 avocado, peeled, pitted and diced
  • 2 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, toasted
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, stems and leaves chopped
  • 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
  • 1/4 cup fresh parsley, bottom stems removed and the rest chopped
  • 1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped

2. Whisk the following ingredients together to make a vinaigrette:

  • Juice and Zest of one organic lemon (zest it first)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon mustard (I like honey mustard for this, but any kind will do)
  • 1 teaspoon real maple syrup
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss well to coat. Serve immediately or store in an air-tight container for up to 24 hours.

Serves 2 as a main course.

 You may also like:

Did you like this recipe? Let me know in the comments below and please share with your friends!

Just Eat It: Za’atar Eggplant Crisps with Yogurt

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This recipe is a classic case of planning one thing and ending up with something much, much better.

It all started with small video clip that I can’t get out of my mind: a man standing behind a giant pile of beautiful, yellow bananas, all perfectly edible, with a big note saying “rejected” on them – rejected because they are the wrong shape or size per supermarket regulations. What led us to this place where perfectly good food gets tossed away because it’s not cosmetically perfect?

This led me down a new trail to researching food waste.  I had been perusing food news as I often do – winding down just before bed.  I came across something I had somehow missed until just now: a trailer for a documentary that aired on April 22nd for Earth Day by a Canadian couple Jen Rustemayer and Grant Baldwin. The film, Just Eat It covers a year in the life of the couple as they spend the year eating only food that would otherwise be thrown away and researching the why, how and where of the incredible amount of edible food that is simply thrown away every day. The statistics shared in the short clips I saw made me want to get my hands on the entire documentary so that I can watch and learn a whole lot more. Take a look:

Here are a few highlights from the clips that made me think again about the value I place on food and ideas we all have about what constitutes good food vs. less appealing or inedible:

  • 40% of the food grown in America gets thrown away (btw: in the UK the number is estimated to be 50%)
  • 30% of the food grown in America gets thrown away at the farm – for cosmetic reasons: too large; wrong shape; minor defect (i.e. slightly different color on skin or growing mark)
  • the average American family throws away 25% of the food they purchase – a fact brought home with a clip of a woman leaving a grocery store with 4 grocery bags, dropping one from her hand, and continuing to walk on…
  • food wasted in grocery stores and restaurants mostly doesn’t get composted – it ends up on the landfill, where it proceeds to release methane gas into the atmosphere
  • 15 million American families struggle to get enough food every month

All this combined with things we may already be aware of: the world has a water crisis; climate change heavily impacts the ability to grow and store food in many parts of the world; the world’s major health problems are mostly diet-related – caused in many cases by eating food that is highly processed with a shelf life of “nearly forever” – implying that some of the food being wasted could be used to replaced the unhealthy stuff in people’s homes so that they could make better choices.

eggplant slices ready for the oven

eggplant slices ready for the oven

So I turned on the oven and went about making eggplant into something I thought I’d add to dinner, later. But as ‘way leads on to way’ (Robert Frost), I turned a corner when I pulled out the Za’atar and serendipitously created a snack I’ll be coming back to again and again.

Eggplant slices after roasting

Eggplant slices after roasting

So pull out a knife and your small, ripe eggplants, and get cooking. These are amazing and eggplants are really good for you. The eggplants are cooked to the point where they just begin to dry out but are still pliable.  The savory combination of salt, olive oil and Za’atar coupled with the smooth, tart yogurt is simply perfection. And you don’t need to wait until your eggplants are on their way out, either: just choose the smaller, younger eggplants so they aren’t bitter, and get cooking!

 If you’re interested in learning more about Food Waste, solutions being implemented, and what you can do, here are some resources:
Ready for dipping

Ready for dipping

Za’atar Eggplant Crisps with Yogurt

3-4 small eggplants, ends removed and sliced to 1/2″ or 1 cm

1 tablespoon Za’atar*

salt to sprinkle

olive oil to drizzle

1/2 cup Turkish or Greek yogurt (low-fat works great too)

Preheat your oven to 200°C/400°F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper

Lay the eggplant slices out on the baking sheet and sprinkle lightly with salt.  Drizzle olive oil over the slices, and then sprinkle each slice generously with Za’atar.  Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, cool slightly, and serve warm with yogurt that’s been sprinkled with additional Za’atar, if desired.

Serves 4 as an appetizer

 *Note: you can buy Za’atar from spice shops and grocery stores, or you can make your own. Try this recipe or this one.
 Looking for other eggplant recipes? Try these:

Did you like this post? What are your thoughts on food waste or how to make better use of the food you buy? We’d love to here from you! Go ahead and leave a comment below and share this with your friends.