Text 13231, 103 rader
Skriven 2008-09-03 12:08:19 av Nancy Backus (1:3634/12.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Janis Kracht
Ärende: Eggplant Parmesan  was: cooking echo Picnic
===================================================
-=> Quoting Janis Kracht to Nancy Backus on 09-01-08 23:59 <=-

 >> Just to let you know I'm pulling for Priscilla, too... :)
 JK> Aw thanks.. she is such a good dog.. so gentle with the kids.. I know
 JK> she bowled over a couple of adults at the picnic (sorry Burt et al !!)
 JK> but she's never done that to the kids or to me.. guess she's used to my
 JK> mis-steps.  Alex used to take her food out of her dish and feed it to
 JK> her baby-doll style. 

She lay on my feet a few times, but never came close to bowling me over,
although I had to step carefully over her a few times too...  :)

 JK> try to snuggle or get close to her.. later as he got bigger and they
 JK> played and all that things got _much_ better. But one day when he was
 JK> about a year old, I heard this ungodly yelping in the back yard so I
 JK> ran out there.. Priscilla was SITTING on Toby, just letting him know
 JK> she was TOP dog ... I did make her let up on the poor guy :)

(chuckle)  Guess she feels she should stay bigger than him, maybe...
Reminds me of a cute sequence with a couple of our cats...  We ended up
adopting a stray male kitten, who was a terror to the older female cats
we already had...  One of the girls handled it by just walking away from
him when he started to bug her... but the other one took care of it by
flopping down on him to make him stop in his tracks.  Comical enough to
watch then... but the kicker came when the kitten got his full growth,
and was then bigger than the female...  He had learned well... he went
over to HER and flopped down on her!  Boy was she miffed then...!

 JK> Pricilla started eating everything in sight soon after she got
 JK> spayed.. The vet told me that getting her spayed would help with her

And they do say that spayed females tend to put on the weight, too.

 JK> trying to get loose all the time (young labs are notorius for that, and
 JK> for eating.  Period.  They will eat anything.. walls, floors,
 JK> bed-springs..(g)), and after Midnight died, we couldn't take the chance
 JK> of disagreeing with him. Before that, I'd really thought about breeding
 JK> them, they were both such good looking labs.. 

Too bad there wasn't some good way of keeping her from running loose on
you, then...

 >> It was basically an Eggplant Parmesan, except that it had no parmesan
 JK> haha.. it never does :)  It's always mozzarella.

Oh, ok...  I think maybe I knew that once...  ;)  I thought maybe a
proper one might have parmesan cheese mixed in the breading or sprinkled
on the top or something...  :)   I know that it usually (also) has
plenty of mozzarella...  :)
 
 JK> Yes, a simple sauce like the one I posted in my earlier message.  The
 JK> sauce 'isn't the thing' in this dish. It's the combination of the
 JK> eggplant which MUST be de-bittered, and the cheese and breadcrumbs.

Hmmm.... I don't think that they did anything to the eggplant to
de-bitter it...  I do remember in recipes for moussaka that one is
supposed to lay it out after slicing with kosher salt sprinkled on it
and weighted...  is that the sort of thing you are referring to?

Or is it just the breading and pre-cooking that de-bitters it?

 JK>  It's not 'because the eggplant has to be masked'.. hehe.. it has to
 JK> be prepared the right way, that's all.. and few people do it right.
 JK> It's like that with most Italian recipes.

I suspect that that is one reason I'm not likely to do well with Italian
(or lots of other) recipes... I really don't usually want to take the
time and effort to do lots of steps...  I'll go for simpler stuff...
 
 >> I think for my friends, Bob and Pope, that the most important
 >> ingredients were the chilies and the Mozzarelle..  Pope was from New
 >> Mexico... and drove an aging Peugeot named Jacqueline...  :)  And the
 JK> Ok, that makes some sense for the peppers :)

Yes...  they didn't make claims for it being authentic... just being
good... and that it really was!   Of course, I like eggplant of all
sorts, in just about any way... as long as it's fixed well...

 >> comment about not eating too much of the mozz was from Bob... they both
 >> were nibbling bits as they cut it up...  I think at least once they even
 >> got an extra package of it just so there would be enough for snacking
 >> on.   (G)

 JK> Lol :)  Too much.. leave it to guys to buy enough to snack on :) :)

Well, they knew their failings... (G)

 JK> Reminds me of college days when I had a couple of guys who decided they
 JK> just had to take care of me or something (g)  They asked me when I'd
 JK> eaten last, and I said, I dunno.. so they mixed spagettios (which I
 JK> like) with everything they could find Lol.. it was HORRID :) :) 
 JK> Meanwhile, they were snacking on healthy things like cheese, and fruit,
 JK> etc. without the spagettios :)

They could have left the spaghettios on their own, and not mixed them
with everything else... then You'd've been happier about it, I bet.  ;) 
You could have had sides of cheese and fruit, etc along with them.  :)

ttyl      neb

... ASSIMILATION PARTY!  I'll bring the Borgers, you bring the Lowenborg!

 * Origin:  (1:3634/12)