Seven days since I last posted and I come to you with nothing. Nothing. No tales of interesting meals, no new recipes, nada. I'm in a food funk.

Cooking has occured. Meals have been made. There were near hits but mainly misses. Some weeks every single thing you cook is just... meh.

There were failures. Outright failures. For instance, my eggplant flan which I'd been so anxious to make ever since the day this past summer I'd tasted it at Jaleo, a tapas restaurant in Washington, DC.

Mike and I had gone to Washington to meet up with some visiting out-of-town family, and after a short round of museuming talk had immediately turned to where to go for lunch. We ended up at Jaleo where we ordered up a bunch of tapas, and everyone shared them, and every single thing we ordered was some varying degree of delicious. Some were super delicious, some were really delicious, and some were just plain delicious, but nothing was any less than delicious.

Everyone chose one or two things from the menu and the thing I chose was an eggplant flan with red pepper sauce from the cold tapas menu. It was amazing -- custardy, creamy, slippery, delicate, and tasted intensely of eggplant.

When I got home, I immediately got on the internet and began looking for recipes but found none. The only thing I turned up when I searched under "recipe eggplant flan" was a book called Catalan Cuisine: Europe's Last Great Culinary Secret which listed eggplant flan among its recipes. I ordered a used copy from Amazon, and this past weekend I finally tried the recipe for eggplant flan.

It was not a success. My eggplant flan was on the dry side and the texture was just slightly cottony. The eggplant flavor was not intense, and the color was not the off-white of the eggplant I'd been served at Jaleo but rather an unappetizing khaki green. The overcooking was in part because I was trying to watch back episodes of The Wire while cooking and my attention was diverted when I should have been paying attention to the custards. Of course, the cookbook instructions were not particularly detailed and after reading a Lidia Bastianich recipe for a mushroom flan with very complete instructions, I realize that custards in the oven need to be watched like a hawk in order to insure they don't overcook.

Mike was completely uninterested in trying more than a bite of it and told me he hadn't really been all that enthusiastic about the original eggplant flan. Apparently I was so busy exclaiming over that eggplant flan that I failed to note that Mike's enthusiasm for it was not actually enthusiasm, just polite agreement. I ate one and couldn't bring myself to eat any of the rest of them, and given Mike's disinterest in them, I probably won't try to work on improving this recipe. On the plus side, all the red peppers I'd roasted in order to make the sauce for the flan were delicious.

Red peppers are one of my favorite things and this time of year is the only time that they are available locally and inexpensively enough that I can eat large quantities on a regular basis. Imagine my disappointment when another of my failures this past week was a recipe for red peppers stewed in balsamic vinegar from Return to Paris: A Memoir by Colette Rossant which is a very charming food memoir of a woman who grew up in Cairo before World War II and then resettled in Paris after the war. While I recommend the book enthusiastically, the red peppers stewed in balsamic vinegar I cannot recommend. I cooked six red peppers in a half cup of balsamic vinegar which reduces and becomes sort of syrupy, then tossed them with a little olive oil and chilled them. This treatment however, did nothing for them.

Let's see. What else have I cooked or otherwise been up to this week.

I bought a crepe pan -- actually I bought two -- prompted by absolutely nothing other than I happened to drive by Williams-Sonoma. Actually I'd been wanting them for a while but it was a sort of out of the blue purchase. Two nights ago, to celebrate my new crepe pans, I made eggplant and tomato sauce filled crepes, except because the tomato sauce and eggplant seemed to be somewhat Italian in mood to me I referred to the crepes as manicotti. It was not initially my plan to make eggplant tomato crepes, and in fact at 5 pm that day I had no plan for dinner whatsoever. What I did have were two cups of marinara sauce in the refrigerator, two eggplants on the counter, and fresh mozzarella in the refrigerator. Somehow the only plan that presented itself was the pseudo manicotti. On closer inspection, the fresh mozzarella turned out to no longer be all that fresh, but there was some mascarpone cheese -- a substance that if mixed with cardboard would probably make the cardboard taste good -- and I mixed a small amount into the tomato sauce with the eggplants, stuffed the would-be manicottis, baked them for a short while, and you know what? They were pretty darned good. In fact, they were probably the best thing I made all week.

But really, that whole making dinner thing, where night after night you come up with some idea for a meal that includes the major food groups (or most of them), is reasonably healthy, and, oh yeah, tastes good, sometimes really seems beyond me some days. I rack my brain and can think of nothing. 

Anyway, I'm trying to shake off my food funk. The squash that you see pictured above is destined to be soup. I have a stack of recipes I'm waiting to try. And if I'm lucky, next week will be better than this week.

Comments

[Nicola]

there's all this food around now and I feel exactly the same way! ugh. food ruts suck. I'll head over to the market today and see what will leap into my imagination...hope your muse plays along...Nicky

[sher]

Ahh--this happens to all cooks, I think. It has been with me for the last weeks. The flan you had at the restaurant sounds wonderful! And you must never cook while The Wire is on! You know how complex the story lines can get! :):) My goodness, you might cut one of your fingers off.

How long do you think McNulty will stay a family man on the show? I give it 4 episodes, then CRASH!

[Mrs. S]

Seriously, I don't even know how you do what you do! You say you are in a food funk, but you told about at least three dishes I'd never even HEARD of, let alone would have the guts to try to make on my own!

My "wonderful dinner ideas" usually include pasta, some form of meat, tomato sauce and maybe veggies. Veggies are expendable, and the tomato sauce totally makes up for it... right?

[Michelle]

Oh sweetie, hang in there. There are lots of people in "food funks" lately - just look around at enough blogs and you'll find them, including my own. The weather is changing (at least here - it's raining and cold!) and a new season is starting and things will come together for you. That squash above looks beautiful! And Jaleo is one of my favorite restaurants that I've EVER been to - we discovered it a few years ago while on a trip in DC and went there twice in the same week! I didn't try the eggplant flan, but the chef there, Jose Andres, has a new cookbook out of his tapas but for the "home cook" supposedly...maybe the elusive eggplant flan is in there? And if you loved it, you could always try it again next time Mike is gone for the evening... Big hugs - my culinary brain is on the lowdown too...

[Julie O'Hara]

You'll definitely get out of your funk! I've had my share of disasters too. And isn't it true that the disasters only seem to occur with time-consuming or expensive recipes as opposed to the quick and easy ones. I'll be sure to check back soon!

[Anne]

I'm totally with you, Julie! I blame the change of seasons. It's not full summer or totally fall yet. And this damp East Coast weather isn't very inspiring either. Hopefully we'll all pull through!

[zp]

I've read lots of your comments over at Toast. Now here's one for you, "I referred to the crepes as manicotti." Unless I am mistaken, Italians in Italy refer to crepes as manicotti too, so to speak. I think I remember eating manicotti in Italy and thinking to myself, "Wait a second, these are not pasta. These are totally delicous crepes." Anybody else?

[Cazza]

I don't care whether you cooked or not (although your family might). I'm just glad to see a post.

I love red capsicum. Roasted and made into a soup. Roasted and marinated in extra virgin olive oil and served with good bread. Raw in a salad. Raw with a sharp cheese.

And so on....

[lobstersquad]

Don´t worry, it´ll go. and eggplant flans are the trickiest thing ever. I´ve never had a good one in my life. plus the colour ain´t all that attractive.

[the bee]

Jaleo food is yummy. The last time I was there though,the waitress dropped food at our table and then joined the witness protection program.No amount of arm waving was enough to convince her to visit our table.The manager told us she was having " a boyfriend problem". Wow.It was not until the end that she came over at all. My sister Jan then told the waitress we were too upset about her boyfriend problem to tip her. I think she got the idea. Next time we will ask the wait staff if they are having "issues" before we sit down. Love the steak there though.

[Julie]

Nicky, being inspired night after night probably even overwhelms muses. Or maybe just mine.

sher, yes, The Wire totally distracted me. It doesn't mix with cooking. And, no, I don't see McNulty mending his ways.

Mrs S, pasta is always one of my main back-ups. It's satisfying, it's fast, I always have it in the house. When I can't think of what to make for dinner I often end up with pasta.

Michelle, excellent tip about the Jose Andres book! I've put it on my Amazon wishlist.

Julie, yes, complicated recipes with expensive ingredients are more prone to disappointment, maybe because I go in with higher expectations.

Anne, we had some pretty gray and drizzly days last week so maybe that's it although generally that's my favorite kind of weather for cooking.

zp, you're right, manicotti can be made with either pasta or a crespella, aka a crepe. But since what I was making in my crepe pan using a crepe recipe was clearly a crepe in my mind, it felt like I was faking the manicotti part. At any rate, as a crepe or manicotti, it was delicious. BTW, I recognize your name from your comments on my sister's blog Meet Me on My Vast Verandah

Cazza, I didn't know red peppers were referred to as capsicum in Australia. I share your love though.

lobstersquad, the one I had at Jaleo was dreamy delicious even though the color wasn't great. But the color on the one I made... yuck!

Bets, aahhhh, the disappearing waitstaff problem. I've had that before, but the waiter we had at Jaleo was super attentive.

[zp]

hmmm . . . I do not remember ever reading "my vast verandah" . . . do you remember what I (or someone else named zp?!) commented on? your sis gets so many comments, and has so many posts I do not know where to start looking for myself or my alter-ego.

[Julie]

zp, my apologies! It's a case of mistaken identity; I confused you with another poster who signs posts with two lowercase letters beginning with a back of the alphabet letter.

[Lydia]

I'm sharing this post with all of my cooking groups....because we all go through those periods where we cook and we cook, but seemingly without inspiration. And then, one day, it ends. The cooking muse comes and goes, but she always comes back!

[Julie]

Lydia, it's been comforting to me to know that other people besides me go through these periods of non-inspiration. Makes it feel a little less discouraging.

[Rebecca]

Until zp made his comment I was thinking, wait a gosh-darn minute, Italians totally eat crepes, in fact I used to make them from one of Marcella Hazan's books.

I know what you mean about having to get a meal on the table and that's what I've been going through--it didn't take me long in my new kitchen!! Leland is afraid I'm fizzling out on him with the blog, but nothing I've been cooking has been blog-worthy, just shoving the nutrients in the direction of my family!

[Maks]

Sponsor Results are sites that pay for placement in search results on terms that are relevant to their business.