Italian Food, Chilean Wine

By Nikki Berglund
Contributing Writer

A couple of weeks ago as Paul and I were preparing to venture out of town for a Foo Fighters concert in Minneapolis, we decided we had better harvest our garden due to the impending forecast of a potential nighttime frost. Because of our bizarro summer weather, along with some sort of tomato fungus, our harvest was a little less abundant than last year but still we were pretty pleased with our bounty. Along with some eggplants and tomatoes, we made sure to also harvest all [of] our herbs. Nothing is more depressing than picking your own basil all summer only to have to go purchase it at the store for an exorbitant amount of money once the weather changes. We put our harvest into our new handy dandy garage fridge, which Paul proudly scored on the cheap earlier this summer and which has proved to be an awesome way to store extra meat, frozen food and especially really, really cold beer and wine.

When we returned from Minneapolis, we decided to use our vegetables for one of our favorite dinners, Eggplant Parmesan. How gratifying is it to go into the grocery store and completely bypass the produce aisle because you’ve grown it all yourself?! The sad part of this story is that unfortunately our new fridge was way too damn cold (we shouldn’t have been surprised after all of that deliciously chilly booze!) and all of the produce was ruined. Needless to say tonight we decided to lick our wounds after basically ruining all of our produce for the year, and went to the store to buy the remaining ingredients for our delicious Eggplant Parmesan.

When it came time for pairing the wine, I had a couple of really nice Chilean selections that I brought home from the liquor store after I realized they had been sitting lonely on the wine rack for way longer than they deserved.  Both wines turned out to be the perfect pairings for our dinner.

Our recipe for Eggplant Parmesan is a mishmash of trial and error therefore making it hard to just offer up one recipe.  We have made it so many times that we are like a well oiled machine yet coming up with the actual origin is a little hazy.  The original reason for mixing and matching recipes came from a desire to create a healthier version. This basically meant adapting the fried eggplant part. For this we consulted Cooking Light Magazine and have just kind of tweaked it a little to our own liking.  While we don’t try to pretend that this is a healthy recipe, baking the eggplant rather than frying it has to account for some reduction in calories, right?

Panko Encrusted Eggplant ( Adapted from:” Recipe Makeover: Eggplant Parmesan”  Cooking Light)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon water
2 cups whole wheat panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 (1-pound) eggplants, peeled and cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 375°. To make eggplant, combine 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon water in a shallow dish. Combine panko and 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano in a second shallow dish. Dip eggplant in egg mixture; dredge in panko mixture, pressing gently to adhere and shaking off excess. Place eggplant 1 inch apart on baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes or until golden, turning once and rotating baking sheets after 15 minutes.

**I am not sure where I learned this trick but if you sprinkle your eggplant with salt and leave in a colander in the sink for a half hour to an hour, you will extract a lot of the moisture from the eggplant. This is particularly helpful in a dish like Eggplant Parmesan where the eggplant can sometimes make it [the dish] a little watery. Be sure to wipe the eggplant in order to get rid of the excess moisture and salt.

**We do not use whole wheat panko, mainly because we haven’t seen it around. Regular panko can usually be found in the same aisle as the breadcrumbs.

As far as our red sauce goes, my husband is the master sauce maker in the family!  He uses the same one for all of our red sauce recipes and it is simple yet always incredible. We will often times make a huge batch and then freeze what we don’t use for later.

Paul’s Red Sauce:
1 medium diced onion
2 tablespoons of olive oil
3-4 garlic cloves minced
28 oz can of crushed/ or pureed tomatoes
14 oz can of diced tomatoes
2 -3 tablespoons of tomato paste
Salt and pepper

Sauté onion and garlic for a few minutes until onions start to be translucent. Then Add tomato ingredients and salt/pepper. Simmer for hour or so stirring occasionally.

Other Ingredients:
Block of Mozzarella
Fresh Basil

To assemble, spoon some pasta sauce in bottom of an 8 x 8-inch glass baking dish coated with cooking spray. Layer eggplant slices over pasta sauce. Top with more pasta sauce; then mozzarella then the fresh chopped basil. Repeat layers, with the cheese on top. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake at 375° for 35 minutes and then remove foil and bake for 10 more minutes or until sauce is bubbly and cheese melts; cool 10 minutes.

I was recently reminded during a wine discussion with a friend about my love of the Chilean winery Montes out of the Colchagua Valley. Chilean wines have a reputation for their varying degrees of quality, which sometimes detracts people from picking them up. You can always count on Montes though whether you are drinking their more affordable wines or their higher end offerings to put forth a quality product.

We started out with the Montes Alpha Cabernet from their higher line of wines. Considered one of the top Chilean Cabernets, this wine is an absolute steal at around $23 per bottle. We then moved onto the Montes Alpha Syrah, one of my all time favorite Syrahs- and I have tried quite a few. Priced the same, if you want a really gorgeous bottle of wine with your red sauces or red meats, this wine will never disappoint! If you are new to the Montes wines, start out with their more affordable Classic line which retail for around $11 or so. My favorite is definitely the Sauvignon Blanc which reminds me, I should probably get one more bottle of this before the frost really does stay on the ground and white wine season is officially done.

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