Straight from the Vero Kitchen, one half of the mother-daughter team behind Ojai Pacific View, Jacqueline Mitchell has brought us a recipe to pair with the newly released vintage of their California Dolcetto!
The recipe uses eggplant, potatoes and a homemade tomato-basil sauce and comes straight from an authentic Trattoria in Northern Italy where Jacqueline worked for over 10 years. It’s a winner (like Ojai Pacific View’s literally award winning Dolcetto)… it looks delicious, tastes divine, and is so easy to make!
🍷 Click here to buy Ojai Pacific View’s California Dolcetto: https://verovino.com/veroshop/dolcetto-california-rich-bold-complex-red-wine
🍷 Click here to get the full recipe for Millefoglie di Melanzane: https://verovino.com/vero-blog/eggplant-recipe-natural-wine-food-pairing-dolcetto-italian-restaurant-parmesan
🍷 Watch our video about the story of and tasting Ojai Pacic View’s California Dolcetto: https://youtu.be/34Byyh2af6Q
About Vero:
Did you know that less than 1% of wines make it to US retailers’ shelves? At Vero, which means “real” in Italian, we are constantly looking for small production, sustainably made, authentic wines from farmer-artisans not yet present in the US market. Our mission is to create a community of wine and food lovers, small producers and businesses where passion is the common denominator.
Do you know what this is in Italian it’s called a melan in English we call it eggplant and sometimes people don’t quite know what to do with it so today I’m going to show you one of my absolute all-time favorite recipes me melan hi there I’m jacan fero and today
This recipe comes courtesy ofo in tro from the long in Italy where I worked for over 10 years so today today for this recipe M melan we need obviously melan an eggplant we need a boiled cooked potato and then to make a tomato sauce to go with it we need Pata
Al Pomodoro a tomato sauce Basilica basil Chipola onion some grated fresh hard aged cheese um I have Pano reano here you can use any other hard aged cheese and then we’ll need a little bit of olive oil and of course some salt all right now we’ve got our ingredients
Let’s Jump Right In and start cooking this so first thing we want to do is prepare our Eggplant so now with our our eggplant cleaned and a little bit of the skin cut off just so it doesn’t get cut tough we’re going to slice some rounds here you want to try and finish if you can with an even number of rounds because our stacks of eggplant are going
To be created with two pieces of eggplant each now once you’ve got your eggplant sliced you’re going to want to just kind of spread them out and we’re going to Salt them by salting it helps to dry out a little bit of the water and it will make them a little bit less Tough okay so we’re going to let those sit now for a few minutes while we start working on the tomato sauce so to make the tomato sauce we’re going to start with a little bit just a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil in our pan and let that just start heating up a
Little bit here then we’re going to sauté a little bit of onion I’ve already got mine chopped here so once we have our onions nice and soft but not quite browned we’re going to take take our tomato sauce and we’re going to put some in the pan [Applause] Here and give that mix mix mix all right we’ve got that cooking I’m just going to season it with a touch of salt here not too much because remember our eggplants do have some salt on them we’re going to just let this kind of sit and cook cook a little bit and thicken
All right so now that we’ve got this thickened up a little bit we’re going to add in our chopped basil and give it a little stir quickly and then we are going to remove it from the Heat and set it aside until later all right so our eggplant have
Been sitting here and they are a little bit wet with that salt so we’re just going to Pat that dry there we go and now you’re going to take your eggplant and one piece at a time just quickly dredge them in your flour now we have our eggplant dressed
Veg in flour I’m heating up just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil here in the Pan Once that’s hot we’re going to start frying our eggplant so when they start to look soft and nice and golden brown we’re going to take them out of the oil and just lay
Them on a piece of scar towel here to soak up any excess Oil so next we are going to start assembling our eggplant so taking our fried eggplant we set first one slice on the tray try to search for the bottom one to be your biggest slices okay next we take a little bit of our Sauce and almost like a little pizza and then parmesan Cheese next we have our potatoes so I’ve already peeled them here well what we’re going to do is just lay down some slices completely covering the eggplant kind of like a little puzzle all right now again Sauce and we top with our second slice of eggplant Now Again Sauce Cheese and Potatoes and we top the whole lot off with a nice generous portion of Our tomato Sauce and lastly our parmesan all right now we are ready to have these go in the oven we’re going to cook them at about 350 to 375° for 10 to 15 minutes or until they look nice and gooey and they’ll be warm completely through let’s get put them in the Oven all right these look delicious this you can serve it then with a little bit of of EX leftover sauce on the side I personally love it with a grating of fresh parmesan over the top or a drizzle of olive oil too and top it with some fresh basil and
You are ready to enjoy your mil melan all right so now we’ve got our m melan but we’ve forgotten an important part what to drink with it personally one of my favorite wines to pair with this dish is the ohigh Pacific View doletto doletto is a variety that is from
Northern Italy in the pedmont region where tro that taught me how to make this dish is also from in fact this wine is special to me as well because it is actually my family’s wine and we’ve done a video on that in a past past I’ll link
To it down below I love to pair this wine with this dish because it’s fruity it has a nice acidity to it that will pair nicely with the creamy fatty eggplant and the nice and tangy basil and tomato sauce and you can find this
Wine to buy in the ver shop I’ll link to that in the description below so thank you for joining me today in creating this melan courtesy of tro and I am going to go enjoy this but in the meantime you can find the full recipe linked and our blog I’ll link it
Down below in the description and grab yourself a glass of doletto to enjoy it with I know I’m going to enjoy it that’s for certain Buo