Stacked and Elegant Vegetable Towers

Here is one of the dishes I will be preparing at my "market talk" at the Minneapolis farmer's market on Saturday, Sept 5, beginning at 10:30 am. If you live in the area, please come out and join us!

Stacked and Elegant Vegetable Towers

2-3 eggs

1-2 cups yellow cornmeal (plain, don’t accidentally use cornbread mix)

1-2 cups flour

Canola oil (for frying)

salt

1 medium eggplant

2 medium zucchini

2 heirloom tomatoes (or beefsteak, or whatever kind tastes good to you)

2 medium balls fresh mozzarella in water

1 bunch basil

salt and pepper to taste

Slice the eggplant thin and lay out on toweled surface. Salt the eggplant liberally and allow to sit until it starts to sweat brown liquid. Mop up the brown beads with a paper towel, flip eggplant and repeat on the other side. Slice zucchini thin and tomatoes (salt the tomatoes if you like).

Crack the eggs into a bowl and beat with a fork. Pour flour and a little salt onto a plate (about 1 cup). Pour cornmeal onto a separate plate.

Heat ~1/2 inch of oil in a frying pan until very hot. Dip eggplant in flour, then in egg mixture, then in cornmeal to cover. Fry carefully in the hot oil until tender and brown. Repeat with zucchini. Using a fork, carefully transfer fried zucchini and eggplant to paper towel.

Assemble stacks layering first eggplant, then basil, then sliced cheese, then basil, then tomato, basil, zucchini, basil etc.. until you have the desired tower height. Season with fresh pepper and salt!

Late August delivered big red jellyfish to long island sound, bringing a deterrent to the waters just as they became warm enough to comfortably swim. I remember the courage I needed to summon just to dangle my limbs into the salty abyss. Home, in the late summer months, was a portable fiberglass hull with an enormous white billowing sail. She was a beautiful family sized sailboat. We bought her when I was five. That evening my family sat around the dinner table, shouting out names and competing to be the one to come up with the most clever. "Panacea" my parents settled on "because it is the cure for what ails you".

Panacea was not a part of my 5 year old vernacular, but I thought it was clever that it had the sound of "sea" in it. The accompanying dinghy (most sailboats carry a small motorboat or rowboat to use for emergencies, or when at anchor or mooring to bring passengers to shore) was named "the little pill".

I felt a certain pride about being a boat kid. I loved to show off, how I could climb around on the boom, how I could balance when the boat was heeling, her rails skimming the water. Some days we heeled over so far that the sound threatened to devour us, it seemed. On these days, the really windy days, I would beg my father to allow me to take the wheel. I especially wanted to steer when it was rainy or stormy, so that I could imagine myself as a heroic captain battling with a turbulent sea. "Not right now", he would say. When the sound had returned to a calm glassy pool, he would call below for me and, swelling with fatherly pride, ask me if I still wanted to steer. He would tell me where to point the bow of the boat and I would old the wheel steady, feeling the thumping of waves against the rudder as we glided along.

Our home port was just to the left of a blue tower with a smoke stack attached. It had two square windows, which resembled two black eyes to me. When my father said "point to the left of that tower" my heart would sink a little. I knew it was time to leave our summer adventures behind, and school concerns would soon take residence in my curious mind.

The salt flakes, the tangled hair, the tanned skin, these things were badges of honor as far as I was concerned. When we got home my poor mother used to have to chase me around the house with a comb to relieve me of the salty dreadlocks that I so desperately wanted to keep, in an attempt to hold on to the last glow of summer as she set.