Albóndigas

Shortly after we returned from Spain, Super G gave me a gift of Phaidon's The Book of Tapas, by Ines & Simone Ortega which delighted me to no end.  The photography is beautiful and there are lots of recipes to try out.  You can buy it here. For my first venture, I decided on meatballs or albóndigas because I thought these could also serve nicely as picnic food, to be warmed up on the barbeque.

So I pretty much did the prep at home and then took them in my fabulous picnic tiffin tin to the picnic site and then warmed them up on the barbeque in a roasting dish.  Worked a treat.  I will try this recipe again although I would probably play with the spice mixture a bit.  For me the seasoning was not adequate. That said, they were even better the second day.

Here's some shots from the preparation:

Eggplant, Goat Cheese & Tomato Stacks with Basil Oil

This is a recipe that I found on my iPhone's epicurious app...which I love by the way. My favourite part is the built-in shopping list feature that allows you to check off the items as you shop or even email them to your honey to buy for you. I came into some basil recently via some props for a  photo shoot we did for a client so it was great to put it to good use in this dish and I made a lovely basil oil by blending a very generous handful of basil with 3/4 cup of olive oil and a pinch of salt.

Afterwards you need to drain the oil from the basil 'solids' using a  coffee filter. I was at Super G's this day so I fashioned something  makeshift out of a chinese rice bowl, a coffee filter and elastic band  borrowed from a sprig of asparagus.

You grill the eggplant  - I used a grill pan rather than the barbeque  and got those lovely charred grill marks.  Make a stack - eggplant,  tomato, basil oil, goats cheese, basil oil. Repeat.

My intention was to use these for our planned BC day picnic so I wrapped them in foil and put them in the fridge so that they could just be popped on the barbeque.  The popping on the barbeque part worked great...I just couldn't wait until the picnic to eat them and we ended using them to test drive the new portable barbeque commissioned earlier in the day.

On reflection, I'd probably pare the goat's cheese down to just one round within a stack. But it sure looked purdy! And yummy too.