Eggplant

Enotria, a new Italian restaurant near Bel Air, is named for what the ancient Greeks called the rich grape-growing region of southern Italy. The word means "land of wine."Wine bottles in a neat row serve as a partition between booths inside the restaurant, which is decorated with fabulous stonework and interesting lighting treatments. The look Enotria is going after is that of a winery in Tuscany.But for all the emphasis on wine, we were surprised that the restaurant was out of our first three choices on the wine list, and our waitress was not much help assisting us in picking a fourth.

Donna Crivello and her partner, Alan Hirsch, have opened yet another Donna's Coffee Bar, in what used to be the Hopkins Store in Charles Village.The newest Donna's is tiny and welcoming. There's a friendly staff, an extended menu and a loose-tea service in addition to coffee drinks.While sipping exotic lili'uokalani tea, my friends and I decided the arty decor could be called industrial chic. Grommeted canvas, corrugated steel and exposed pipes are the yang. Fresh flowers, oak veneers and aged brick are the yin. A few of the restaurant's two dozen tables are situated outside, in a heated tent that can be removed for alfresco dining when the weather turns warm.

THE THING TO remember about cooking on Labor Day is that you don't want to work very hard. The idea is to enjoy a day free of heavy toil, to avoid adding tasks to the workload you are comfortable carrying.That level of comfort varies from cook to cook. Meals that some folks regard as requiring no effort at all, others regard as an undertaking worthy of a lifetime achievement award.As for me, I go to the grill on Labor Day. That is where I feel at ease. Hanging around the grill seems more like playing with fire than producing supper.

The heel of the boot that is Italy dips gingerly into the Ionian Sea, a sea that in turn laps against the shores of western Greece. This is a highfalutin introduction to a simple observation: Italian and Greek food are two great tastes that go great together.This concept is not lost on George and Rose Minas or Jimmy Minadakis, who reopened this old Highlandtown favorite last fall. Illona used to be a comfortable anomaly in Greektown, serving big portions of hearty Italian-American fare. It closed last January after the owner died.

Pomegranates start appearing in the stores around the end of November, and their sweet-tart taste brightens the earth tones of winter foods through the end of February.My biggest challenge when first using pomegranates was how to open and seed them without getting crimson stains on everything. A friend with more pomegranate experience finally showed me the proper way to open one and clean the tart seeds from their white membrane.She immersed the fruit in a large mixing bowl of water. Then she broke the pomegranate open and pulled the seeds out underwater.

Celery-seed dressing and an eggplant Parmesan that can be made in the microwave may rev up your cooking mood.Cathy McNamara of Baltimore requested the celery-seed dressing. "In the '60s and early '70s, I worked in Hutzler's in Towson as a waitress and we served a chef salad with this dressing. It was fantastic, and I've lost the recipe and hope someone in good ol' Baltimore has it."Many offered recipes. Chef Gilles Syglowski chose one from Charles Cluxton of Baltimore, who wrote: "Although Hutzler's was privately owned, they did belong to a group of associated stores throughout the country.

The season for expected and unexpected guests has arrived, and with it, the season when hosts and hostesses are especially grateful for recipes that provide easy-to-prepare nibbles.So I collected recipes from my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and wife. To do my share, I've added one of my own.One of the most reliable snack presentations in our family is that old standby, the crudites platter. Cooked cauliflower and broccoli never have the charm of these vegetables served raw and crisp with a tangy dip. Bell pepper strips of various colors; slices of carrot, celery, zucchini; and, for variety, perhaps fresh fennel, cucumber and radishes appeal to almost everyone.

ZUCCHINI IS a vegetable of many metaphors.It is hard to refer to them in the singular. You rarely see a solo, declarative zucchini. The more common condition is Zucchini! Katie, bar the door!They arrive with the sudden fury of a summer thunderstorm. For a long time there is nothing. Then one afternoon you notice a gathering of dark forms, and before you know it they descend on you. Big green guys, most long and thin; some wide guys as well.Their initial appearance is the cause of some excitement.

Everyone's mother always has a favorite recipe that is appropriate for all occasions. My mother's is an eggplant mixture called caponata.You can use caponata as a dip, sandwich filling with mozzarella or Provolone cheese on top and then baked, or as a pizza topping, omelet filling or pasta sauce.CaponataMakes 6 servings2 medium unpeeled eggplants, washed and cut into 1/2 -inch dice (2 1/2 pounds total)1 tablespoon kosher salt, for soaking3 tablespoons pure olive oil1 medium onion, chopped5 stalks celery, chopped3 cloves garlic, minced1 (3-ounce)

I almost dropped the phone. Alexis wanted a recipe for ratatouille.Every day, my daughter Alexis calls from college and often our conversations turn to the subject of cooking. That's not the point. It was the ratatouille part that puzzled me.Throughout her childhood it was a conundrum. This child loved vegetables, but hated ratatouille (pronounced rat-tah-too-ee). The flavors in this traditional dish from Provence, a southern region in France, sing with the flavors of a summer garden -- eggplant, summer squash, bell peppers and sun-ripened tomatoes.

Question: : I am 64 and nearing retirement, but with the stress of the economic downturn, I'm having a difficult time sleeping. Sleeping pills like Ambien or Lunesta cost more than $160 a month, which I cannot afford. What can you recommend for me so I can sleep at night and stay sharp on the job? Answer: : Ambien is available as an inexpensive generic, zolpidem. It has some adverse effects, though: Some people sleepwalk or even sleep-drive while on this drug, and many readers report some generic formulations don't work as well as Ambien.

I live in Sweden and work from home, so I rarely come down with colds. However, the other day I got a whopper - a sore throat, a horrible runny nose and a really bad cough - so I decided to try Kan Jang. Kan Jang is a popular cold remedy here produced by the Swedish Herbal Institute. I started on Kan Jang a day ago and was surprised by the results. My runny nose is completely gone, and my cough has subsided drastically. The postnasal drip that has been driving me nuts for a couple of years is gone.

Thai green curry with chicken offers an appealing mixture of sweet and hot flavors. The curry paste has peppery, often fiery, notes, and a coconut milk sauce adds a gratifying creamy richness. The slices of chicken tossed with few bamboo shoots, some basil, a handful of sliced carrots, and maybe some eggplant and peas, give you a pleasing, potent dish served over rice. Among the thicket of Thai restaurants in Baltimore, I found three winning examples. Thai Restaurant Address --3316 Greenmount Ave. Phone --410-889-6002 Hours --Lunch: 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; Dinner: 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 5 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Sunday An artful, if mild, mixture of chicken and vegetables, including eggplant, for $13.75.

Panini Express 70 Delicious Recipes Hot Off the Press Massimo's Italian Kitchen Authentic One-Dish Meals From a Seasoned Chef By Massimo Capra Sellers Publishing / 2007 / $22.95 Both Maxine Clark and Food Network chef Massimo Capra highlight oodles of inventive risotto dishes in their tomes. Capra's Risotto With White Asparagus, Black Pepper and Wild Strawberries and the one with shrimp scampi and zucchini look delicious. The Red-Beet Risotto I made was vivid in color but tasted bland.

Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking By Harumi Kurihara Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking By Masaharu Morimoto DK Publishing / 2007 / $40 The artsy tableaus in the Japanese Iron Chef's new cookbook might be more at home on a coffee table than in the kitchen. Masaharu Morimoto's brand of global fusion is a flamboyant 180 degrees from Harumi Kurihara's more humble - and practical - home-style fare. Eating is theater to the television star and restaurateur. I wasn't too intimidated to make Morimoto's signature raw Tuna Pizza With Anchovy Aioli but couldn't find decent ruby-red, sushi-grade fish in time.

Walk into a hopping tapas bar in Spain or a little osteria in Italy, and right at the front door you're likely to find a table full of bowls of vegetables. At first glance, you might think this is just one more sign that the end of the world is near: a salad bar in Europe? But there's one big difference: Most of the vegetables will have been cooked, and not just a little bit - they'll be almost limp. And they will be delicious. While modern cooks have made a cult of crispness since the introduction of nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s, it pays to remember that sometimes long cooking brings out flavor.

I want to make baba ghannouj. Can I roast the eggplants in the microwave? Roasting an eggplant whole is the easiest way to turn its flesh into a soft, succulent puree - the base for baba ghannouj and other eggplant salads. But it cannot be accomplished in a microwave oven. Unlike the ambient heat generated by conventional ovens, so-called microwaves penetrate only about 1 1/2 inches into foods. If you microwaved a ball of rice that was 3 inches in diameter - about the size of a baseball - the center would get hot because the center is only 1 1/2 inches from the surface.

Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone Edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler Riverhead Books / 272 pages/ $22.95 What do you do when the fridge is full but there's no one but yourself to cook for? Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant explores this tantalizing question in 26 sharply written essays penned by food critics and couch potatoes alike. But what makes this book so arresting is not its rigorous examination of ratatouille recipes, but the clever way it arrives at the issue of how people deal with being alone.

The PlumpJack Cookbook Great Meals for Good Living From the Earth to the Table John Ash's Wine Country Cuisine By John Ash Chronicle Books / 2007 / $24.95 I cannot vouch for the Fresh Corn Ice Cream With Almond Lace Cookie Fans, one of the more offbeat recipes offered by author John Ash. But weird as it sounds, I am tempted to make it, if only because what I did cook from this book was so good. An expanded, paperback version of a volume first issued in 1995, this book will appeal to adventurous foodies.

Side dishes can make or break a diet. So when it comes to making smart choices, a veteran restaurant critic I know offers this rule of thumb: Never eat a starch unless it is "out of the ordinary." That effectively eliminates most mashed potatoes, french fries, pastas and white rice - largely empty carbohydrates with low nutritional value and just average flavor. What's left? Brown rice, whose chewy texture can break up mealtime monotony and boost nutrition. The government recently advised Americans to eat three servings daily of whole grains, which have been linked to a lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.