This was an experiment that worked out pretty well (although I could have taken a better photograph, I was just too hungry). The sauce is made with roasted eggpplant, yellow squash and red pepper and yogurt. I found some goat milk yogurt, which has a bit more richness. Its fairly simple, and can be done quickly, but the veggie roasting takes about a half hour. This sort of sauce is perfect for lamb, with the tangy yogurt, and sweet roasted veggies. You could probably make this without the butter, and without the final heating stage, and it would make an awesome pita bread dip.

1 baby eggplant

1 yellow squash

1 red pepper

4 ozs. goat milk yogurt

1 T butter

1 rack of lamb, cut into chops

Shitake mushrooms for garnish

Cut the vegetables into large chunks, (saving a slice or two for garnish) drizzle with olive oil, put in a pie plate, or on a cooking sheet and roast in a hot (400F) oven for half hour or so, until the chunks just start browning. You don't need to char the skin the way some recipes call for. Turn them half way through cooking. Let them cool for a bit and peel off the skins. I found that you usually don't need to do any special tricks to pull off the skin if they're cooked enough and you let them cool a bit. Blend them with a hand blender or processor until just past a lumpy texture. For a fancy presentation, you might want to puree this smooth, but I wanted this to have a bit of consistency to it.

Pan grill the chops until they have some nice markings, along with the veggies and mushrooms you'll use for garnish. Finish in the oven at 325F for 5 or 6 minutes. While the chops are in the oven, melt the butter in a saucepan, add the pureed veggies, and heat through before adding the yogurt. Heat the sauce just to bubbling.

Serve the chops on a puddle of the sauce, with some more drizzled on top, along with the garnish veggies and shrooms.

The comments from my vegetarian question brought up an interesting issue - vegetarian wine. There's meat in wine you say? Is that why it goes so well with food? Actually it has to do with the 'fining" of wine, or the clarifying process. From this article in the Vegetarian Journal:

"Some clarifiers are animal-based products, while others are earth-based. Common animal-based agents include egg whites, milk, casein, gelatin, and isinglass. Gelatin is an animal protein derived from the skin and connective tissue of pigs and cows. Isinglass is prepared from the bladder of the sturgeon fish. Bentonite, a clay earth product, serves as a popular fining agent. "

Not a vegan? Don't care if there's a little fish bladder in your Chardonnay since your going to be drinking it with trout anyway? Well there may be other benefits to vegan and organic wine. From Superplonk's article on Organic wine:

"Many times I have let my views known to winemakers. At Fetzer, the world's largest organic grape grower, my views, expressed a few years back, did encourage the wine making management to abandon egg-white fining on certain of their reds. This was due to my experience of tasting their zinfandels and cabernets in barrel and finding them thrilling, but less thrilling when, many months later, they turned up in bottle. The difference was solely due to the fining process which was removing personality and exuberance from the wine. If it doesn't sound too fanciful, a wine can lose its soul when fined or heavily filtered."

Here's some more food blogs that weren't on my list:

Pie blog!

Appetites

hungry tiger

Kurtosis at Skewness has a post about being admonished in a Whole Foods by a militant vegetarian. I repeat my comment here:

If an individual feels that strongly about meat being murder, why do they shop in a place that sells it?

Same thing has happened to me a few times, in varying degrees at Whole Foods, usually at checkout, when my food stuff is spread out on the belt for inspection.

Yesterday, by coincedence, a kind looking older woman in sandals asked "You have so many nice vegetables there, why do you need that meat?", pointing at my lamb chops. She had some vegetables and four or five bottles of vitamins and herbal pills in her basket. I resisted the urge to ask her the same question regarding the vitamins. I wished I had.

But what about my first question? We know that politics effect many people's shopping habits, be it for labor practices, environmental issues etc. Do serious vegetarians have a choice though? Apart from shopping at farmer's markets, do vegans and vegetarians have a place they can go to buy quality produce, that sell no meat products?

This foodie quiz is going around. Way too easy, even though I didn't know what a Chiogga was.

The Nobody's Fool Eating Journal has a short post on ajvar, one of those little know food items that should be in everybody's frig.

I thought I'd share with you my favorite ajvar. Ajvar for those of you who don"t kinow is an eggplant and red pepper spread. Adjika is the same sort of thing but its made with hot peppers, and has a nice, level of heat.

I've tried a few different brands of adjvar, but the most flavorful seems to be this brand illustrated to the right. It's bright red, and has a sweet tasty pepper flavor that could be used to compliment almost anything. I can't tell you what the name is, since I don't speak whatever language that is, but just look for the smiling old people on the label.

I'm preparing my report on a trip to The Illinois State Fair, but in the meantime you can read about it at Andrew's and Cinnamon's blogs.

Also check out these food links:

Cooking with monkey via AKMA

Does a 50-buck wineglass buy you better-tasting wine?

Slashdot questions for Alton Brown I'll have to remember to look for the answers when they come out.

Tips on how to shop at a farmer's market (read the listeners tips too). A few not mentioned - go early, less crowds, better selection. Also when you go early, you'll see the professionals shopping, watch and learn from them. And bring small change - singles especially, these are farmers, not banks. I always do, and the farmers love you for it. Why the hell do you have to write a check for three dollars worth of vegetables?

This is a typical Italian pasta dish with a few un-Italian vegetables thrown in. The mix of Thai eggplant, poblano and Asian sweet twist peppers melds with the tomato sauce and calamari the same way regular eggplant and common bell peppers would. Some fresh mozzarella is essential in the mix.

1/2 pound or more, cleaned calamari, sliced
8-10 small plum tomatoes
3 thai eggplants (these are the round ones)
1 poblano pepper
1-2 asian sweet twist peppers
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 shallot
fresh oregano
tomato paste
fresh mozzarella
Marsala
1 lb. fusilli pasta

This recipe will make enough sauce to lightly coat the pound of pasta.

Slice the tomatoes in half and cook them down with a little olive oil in a large pan or skillet. Give the tomatoes a couple of minutes to cook down a bit, then throw in the peppers, sliced or diced. In the meantime boil some water and cook some fusili (spiral) pasta.

When the tomatoes and peppers are just getting some good color, add the shallot, garlic, oregano (a couple of pinches) give it a stir to sweat the shallot and garlic, then add half a can of tomato paste mixed with about a 1/4 cup of Marsala. If you like lots of sauce all over your pasta, use the rest of the can. Since the vegetables and the calamari are the focal point here, I don't won't to drown them in sauce. I also like to go easy on the Marsala in this dish, otherwise the sweetness overpowers everything else.

While the sauce reduces down, slice the thai eggplant, and brown them in a separate pan, with some butter and olive oil. You may want to keep them aside for presentation, because if you toss them in the sauce, they'll break up.

In the separate pan, heat some butter and oil and toss in the sliced up calamari and toss around, cooking only until it turns color, toss into the sauce. Now you've perfectly timed the pasta to be done by now, so let the sauce simmer while you drain it, and then toss it into the sauce. Put some fresh sliced mozzarella on top and put under a broiler until the cheese is gooey.