Deli-Style Aubergine, Roasted Red Pepper, Mozzarella and Pesto Sandwich

I haven't blogged in a while, probably due to general laziness brought on by the festive season. Christmas - the perfect excuse to eat too much, drink too much, not go to the gym, and just generally laze about doing not too much at all. I love it! Anyway, despite not blogging much, I have been busy in my veggie kitchen, and today I thought it was about time to stop being so lazy and actually write about some of the yummy food I have been creating.

Going hand in hand with the whole 'taking it easy' part of Christmas, I took a couple of days off work this week. On days when I'm not working, I love that I don't have to plan and make my lunches in advance, and so yesterday I took advantage of this by popping to the supermarket for a few random ingredients and experimenting to come up with what may now be my favourite sandwich EVER! Aubergine, roasted red pepper and mozzarella all go together so well and instead of butter, I used pesto to really make this sandwich something special - like something you'd order out of a deli. I loved it so much that I also figured out a way to turn it into a packed lunch (well, almost - a kind of cheat's packed lunch) which I'll explain after I've told you the main recipe.

Deli-style sandwich - ignore the fact that the pepper looks like a tongue
(thanks to David for pointing this out!)

Aubergine, Roasted Red Pepper, Mozzarella and Pesto Sandwich

Ingredients (per sandwich):

2 slices (sliced lengthwise) aubergine

1 ciabatta roll (or other fancy bread roll)

1 tbsp pesto

2-3 slices mozzarella

1/2 roasted red pepper (from a jar, unless you can be bothered roasting your own, which I never can - wash it under running water first to get ride of all the oil, then pat dry so it doesn't soak into the bread)

Method:

Pre-heat a griddle pan and place your aubergine strips onto it. Wait until the lines are charred into the under-side, then turn over and cook on the other side until also charred. Remove from the griddle pan. At this stage, you may like to chop the strips into smaller pieces, to make them more manageable to eat once they're in your sandwich (I find that, much as the whole strips look prettier, when I take a bite out of my sandwich, the whole strip can get dragged out, rather than just the bite I wanted to take!). Cut the roll in half and spread the pesto over the bottom half. Layer all remaining ingredients on top - aubergine, then mozzarella, then red pepper. Close the roll and there you have it - the perfect sandwich!

Packed lunch method:

If you want to make the filling ahead of time, simply place the aubergine (definitely chop it into smaller pieces, in this case), mozzarella, red pepper and pesto into a small plastic tub and mix together. To get the full deli effect, if you work close enough to a supermarket or bakery where you can buy a fresh bread roll at lunchtime, buy the roll just before you prepare your sandwich. Ok, so you still have to pop out to buy it, but you only spend 30-50p as opposed to £3-£5 on a full deli sandwich. If you don't have the option of popping out to buy a fresh roll, I would suggest taking a roll with you and only assembling the sandwich right before you eat it, rather than putting the filling on at home and allowing it to soak into the bread. This way, you still feel like you're eating a fresh sandwich rather than a crushed lump out of the fridge.

If you try making this, please let me know what you think. What other deli-style sandwiches have you made DIY versions of? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Yotam Ottolenghi's Lemon and Aubergine Risotto

So, tonight I decided to try a new recipe from a book that was given to me as a birthday present: Lemon and Aubergine Risotto from Yotam Ottolenghi's book, Plenty. This is a beautiful book, which I love looking through (I sometimes just read cook books for fun, as nice bedtime reading...!), but the one criticism I would make is that sometimes the recipes seem to call for quite obscure ingredients, or time-consuming techniques. Ottolenghi does also seem extremely bothered by the quality of his ingredients.

Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing - of course it is great to be cook with the freshest, best ingredients you can find, or afford, but sometimes he just seems to take things to extremes. For example, in the introduction to one recipe, he states that he "would ditch the idea at once if [he] couldn't get a ripe, summery tomato, juicy and sweetly intense, a tomato that has never seen a fridge or a chilled truck, only soil and sun". I don't know about you, but that kind of puts me off even trying to make that recipe. Would I really have the time and energy (and possibly money!) to go off on this massive search for the perfect tomato before I could even contemplate making what is essentially a tomato and mozzarella salad? I don't think I would. I have decided to give the recipe a go at some point anyway, with 'average' ingredients and see what I think.

But tonight was all about one of the recipes that seems at first glance a little too time-consuming, but after thinking about how delicious it would probably be, I decided to give it a go. It was also recommended by the friend who gave me the book, and I always love a recommendation!

The time-consuming part of this was the burning (yes, you read that correctly - burning!) of one of the aubergines. This can be done on the flame of a gas hob in about 15 minutes, apparently, so this makes the recipe immediately more appealing if you have a gas hob. But, as you may have guessed, I do not have a gas hob. So method number two it was, then. Method number two involves grilling the whole aubergine under the grill, turning occasionally, for about an hour. See, I told you it was time-consuming! But I have to say, the taste of the flesh that you scoop out of this burnt aubergine is just amazing, and completely worth the effort. My tip for this part of the process, if you have an electric hob, is to do this step in advance - I actually burned my aubergine on Monday afternoon as I had the day off work and thought I'd take advantage of some extra kitchen time to prep! I then stored the pre-burnt auberine in the fridge for a couple of days, only scooping out the flesh tonight when I came to that step in the recipe. This really made a difference to the amount of effort I felt the whole dish took - it was great having that first, annoying step right out of the way already! This actually links in to an idea I saw another - much more established!! - vegetarian blogger (Gemsmaquillage) talking about on YouTube, about prepping all your food at the beginning of the week. I want to talk more about this in another post, but in the meantime, head over to Gemma's blog when you've finished reading this, as it has lots of great ideas!

The rest of the recipe involved cooking a basic risotto (one onion, two cloves of garlic, 200g arborio rice, 120ml white wine [ok, I never measure wine, so there may have been more in my risotto!] and 750ml vegetable stock). Again, Ottolenghi likes to suggest that his readers make their own stock from scratch. Perhaps I am lazy, but when I have been at work all day and just want to make a nice meal for myself, the last thing I feel like doing is making the stock from scratch when I have some stock cubes in the cupboard. So I reached for the trusty stock cubes tonight, I have to admit. Right at the end, two tablespoons of lemon juice, the zest of half a lemon, butter, the aubergine flesh, parmesan and a little salt are added to the risotto. This is left covered for five minutes, and then to serve, a little parmesan, the other half of the lemon zest, some basil leaves, and some fried aubergine cubes are sprinkled on top.

I love risotto, and I love aubergine - if it is properly cooked - but I would never have thought to combine the two. I thought this was absolutely delicious, and looked pretty too. My boyfriend wasn't too impressed when he tasted a bit of the aubergine - but then, in fairness, he has always hated aubergine! This was my last-ditch attempt at converting him. I guess I failed there :-(

Another failure tonight was my camera and my phone camera - unfortunately, my phone is playing up a bit at the moment, so although it seemed that I was able to take a few nice pictures of the risotto, when I actually went back to the gallery, only one had saved. I then got out my trusty camera....but the batteries were dead and I couldn't find any new ones. So, sadly, the picture above is all I have to show for my efforts (well, that plus the leftovers in the fridge). 

I would definitely recommend that you check out Plenty - although I do think some of the recipes seem a little more complicated or time-consuming than I would normally choose, they are great for when you are in the mood to be a little bit more creative in the kitchen. Plus, you can always adapt and incorporate time-saving ideas (like using a stock cube instead of making stock, that kind of thing) to cut down on the time/effort required. And like I said before, it really is a beautiful book to flick through and be inspired by.

I would be really interested to hear what anyone else thinks of Yotam Ottolengi's books/recipes - do you have any more recommendations for me? Or any other good time-saving tips in the kitchen?

Thank you for reading my first ever blog post, and I hope you come back soon for more from my veggie kitchen!