Culinary Disappointments

AKA, I totally couldn't cook today. In my defense, I was using new-to-me ingredients, but I still went 0-for-2 -- I doubt that I'll ever use these ingredients again. (At least not anytime soon...)

Strikeout number one was Indian eggplants. (I should have gone with the original plan of googly-eyes and baby clothes.) The sauce was pretty good -- not that I followed the recipe -- but I still don't like eggplant. I think it's the seeds. So I'll puree the stuff, and serve it with either soba noodles or brown rice. (It was also a total pain to peel 20 tiny eggplants.)

Strikeout number two was pattypan squash. They're basically mutant zucchini. I was attempting to make this recipe, which calls for boiling the squash, then cutting them in half and removing the squash part to leave an empty shell. Riiiiiiiight. I couldn't get it to work...so now I've got a bunch of chopped zucchini guts mixed with sauteed garlic and onion. (I peeled the squash rather than throwing it out.) I may chop it finely and bake it with breadcrumbs -- it's not bad, it's just not worth all of the effort that it required. (Especially with 6 non-mutant zucchinis in my fridge.)

Oh well -- on the upside, I'll know better for next time. (Lesson: no cute produce!) And I did make a pretty good fruit crisp with the rest of the nectarines and apricots.