In approximately twenty eight hours, I will be running in my first marathon and my feelings at this stage are a mixture of nerves and excitement. Last night I had a dream that tracked my race mile per mile, granted much longer than the actual race, but this marathon thing seems to be surrounding me. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited and ready to conquer it!
As I am taking tomorrow off from the office to travel down to Washington DC where I will be running, I thought this week our GCF should come a day early, seeing as Thursday was my Friday this week. I also knew that tomorrow, I would want to tell you all about one of my favorite cheese stores in the world, Cowgirl Creamery, which has its only East Coast outpost in DC, so get excited!
For this evening's GCF I thought we would play off of the "pre-marathon pasta dinner shindig" and shake things up a bit -- taking a sauce that traditionally tops pasta and placing it on some of Grandaisy's green olive loaf with a cheese that is typically grated on top of pastas. In return, you will get the homey flavors that you know and love, just on a different canvas.
So ladies and gents, what do you think the sauce is? Caponata! A nice mix of eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil, pinenuts, capers, basil, and red wine vinegar. This is a sauce that can stand on its own which is why I think it will work very well for our Pasta Accouterments Done Differently GCF.
I like to roast the eggplant until it is lightly golden brown, not too dark, with olive oil, garlic, onions, and some aromatics for about twenty minutes at about 300 degrees, depending on your oven, of course. While the eggplant is roasting, I like to take about a dozen campari tomatoes and saute them with the same ingredients, olive oil, garlic, onions and aromatics. If you are feeling cheap or lazy, you don't have to go with fresh tomatoes, you can always use canned diced tomatoes, but I think that the fresh tomatoes pack a nicer punch. Once you feel that the eggplant is getting golden, toss it into the same pan with the tomatoes and then added some diced up drained capers and let all of this simmer for another fifteen to twenty minutes. Take it out and place it in a bowl and combine it with lots of fresh basil and some pinenuts.
Now for the cheese, you are going to need few nice slices of aged Parmigiano Reggiano to top your two slices of green olive bread with caponata. Then bake it all together and what you will get is a savory blend of quintessential Italian flavors guaranteed to satisfy and give you energy for a run tomorrow morning. If unlike me, you are not running a marathon on Saturday, I recommend having this sandwich with a nice medium bodied glass of red wine. I'd recommend the Cantina Zaccagnini's Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, a smooth unique and delish red wine found at 67 Wine Shop on Columbus and funnily enough 68th street.
Have a good evening ladies and gents.
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping into the store. Just for some back story on the name, the original address for the store was 67 West 67th. When the building was coming down in the 1970s, the store had already been around for 35 years, and didn't want to lose name recognition. Now, 35 years later, we get a lot of questions, since no one remembers the original store.
Paul Bressler
67 Wine