A week or so ago, I decided I wanted to make some greek-inspired food: caponata, baklava, and what Giada calls "Crispy Smoked Mozarella with Honey and Figs."

The caponata is composed mostly of things that I can grow in my garden, therefore, it makes a very good meal. The ingredients are one can diced tomatoes, two zucchini, two summer squash, two tomatoes, one large eggplant, one red onion, one potato, three garlic cloves, olive oil, salt, black pepper, and oregano. (Click the link above for specifics.) If I actually can my tomatoes this year, I could get the first four ingredients out of my garden, and the first seven if I plant red onion and garlic. Perfect!

First you put in a layer of diced tomatoes in a 9"x13" casserole dish.



Next you slice up all the vegetables and combine them in a bowl as you slice them.





I used some tongs to mix all of the vegetables so the spices and olive oil equally coated them. After that, I just poured the vegetables on top of the tomatoes in the 9"x13" pan.





Last, you put it in a 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes until the vegetables start to darken. While this was happening, I was working on the baklava and mozzarella.



We put our caponata on slices of fresh sourdough bread. It was heavenly. This dish is very easy to make and it tastes amazing. I recommend it heavily. (Again, the full recipe courtesy of Giada de Laurentiis is provided through the link above.)

The baklava was a little harder to make and it was my first foray into the world of phyllo. First I had problems getting it to defrost and then I had problems getting it to stay pliable without tearing apart. This was definitely a little more difficult than most recipes I try. However, now that I've done it once, I could do it again with no problems at all.



You take these extremely thin sheets of phyllo and plaster six of them together, layering each with melted butter. You cut your sheets into 12 pieces. Then you take the ingredients which you minced via a food processor and place a tablespoon in each 1/12th of a phyllo sheet. You fold them up into a mini-muffin pan, and then you start over again with another set of phyllo sheets, to make 24 total. You are actually supposed to "twist" the tops of the baklava packages, but that surely wasn't happening. I just kind of smushed mine in.



These are so delicious that I will certainly make them again. ...or I'll at least make the filling. (By the way, the phyllo was hardening too fast, so I had Aarons help in smushing and filling. Thanks honey!)

Last, I made the "smoked" mozarella. Unfortunately we couldn't find any smoked mozarella, so we just used plain mozarella. It worked out perfect. I absolutely despise frying, so I got the packages ready for Aaron, and he fried them for me.



They look rather like tiny burritos and mushrooms, instead of mozarella wrapped in phyllo and figs. Neat!



Num, num!

Labels: cooking