I’ve been having an amazing amount of good fortune lately, so I thought I would pay the universe back by cooking all of my besties an Italian feast! Also who doesn’t love a good theme night? I made my dads famous Italian salad and sausage with peppers, served a top some pesto linguine.
Friends, vino, peroni, food, and Sinatra. What more do you need!
Drawing out of a hat to decide that the next theme night will be Greek!
This week chanterelle mushrooms were in the box at Hollygrove. These are super fancy mushrooms so I saved them for a belated birthday dinner with my good friend. I now understand why these mushrooms cost a million dollars at whole foods, because they are delicious! I added these spicy exotic beauties in to a cream sauce and slathered it on top of breaded eggplant, add in two bottles of wine and delightful dinner we had!
I love how pretty the chanterelle mushrooms are, they are a beautiful golden color and the larger ones are shaped like flowers.
To make the cream sauce
2 cloves garlic finely minced
1/4 cup butter
2 cups chanterelles
2 pints cream
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp white pepper
1 cup dry white wine
1. In a medium saucepan sautee garlic in butter for about 3 minutes or until butter starts to bubble. Add in wine, cream and spices and bring to a boil.
2. meanwhile dry sautee chanterelles in a separate pan until moisture is evaporated.
3. combine mushrooms in to sauce mixture and simmer for 30 minutes stirring frequently. At the end it should look like this……..
For the eggplant
1 large eggplant peeled and sliced in to 1/4 inch pieces
2 eggs beaten
3 cups home made breadcrumbs (recipe below)
salt to taste
1. to bread the eggplant lightly salt, dip in egg mixture, then coat both sides with the bread crumbs.
2. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with a light coat of olive oil, place eggplant pieces in pan evenly spaced and not covering each other, drizzle olive oil on top and bake at 400 for 45 minutes flipping pieces half way through cooking.
I like to set up an eggplant assembly line that looks a little like this………
Making bread crumbs
Once I made my own bread crumbs my world was changed. It is so easy and they taste so much better! You can also add in whatever flavors you would like taking recipes using bread crumbs to a whole new level. For this recipe I added in parmesan, asiago, and dried basil.
To make bread crumbs simply dry out bread slices in the oven. Cook for about 15 minutes at 400. I used a baguette here but any bread will work as long as it gets nice and crunchy. Place bread, spices, and cheese if you are using in to a food processor, pulse, and voila!
I served all of this over angel hair with asparagus. The asparagus and cream sauce complimented each other quite nicely.
