Meatless Mondays

I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for new cookbooks with colour pictures--I get right into it (until the novelty wears off).  This week, the Autumn edition of "Food and Drink--The Art of Entertaining" was put out by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.  

Evidently, during the first and second World Wars, people on both sides of the Pond got in the habit of not eating meat on Mondays to conserve meat rations.  These days, people are coming around to the idea that less red meat makes us and our planet healthier.  To that end, they gave us several meatless recipes that caught my attention.

Eggplant Tortino! 

 Hmmm....sounds nutritious.  Eggplant and Swiss Chard--extremely nutritious.  Then we get to the three kinds of cheese, whipped cream and eggs.  Now it's starting to sound too good.  Sonny Boy wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.  He said-

 "heart attack on a plate" 

but I'm thinking the no-meat part and the "nutritious" part were what gave him pause.

I'll show you the pictures and you can judge for yourselves.  Let me know:  do you really think this meal was healthier than meat and potatoes?  Don't forget that with meat, I would have been serving red, not white wine.  (Red wine is really good for you, or so they say.)

First I baked the eggplant to softened.

Then, I steamed the Swiss Chard with spices, added cream and first cheese.

The next step was layering eggplant, swiss chard/cheese and second cheese for three layers in a spring-form pan.  Finally, the whole pie got drenched in egg mixture and topped with grated parmesan.

Into a hot oven for half an hour,

and voila!

Yes, I confess...I got sidetracked reading your lovely blog posts and left it too long in that very hot oven. Not burned, just more flavour!