I saw these attractive champignon mushrooms in the shuk last week.

Selecting the firmest, one by one, I half-filled a bag. Clutching it to me and dreaming out the window on the bus home, I thought of  mushroom soup and a leek/mushroom quiche. Possibly gnocchi with mushroom sauce. But I knew I’d still have mushrooms left over. Well, there’s duxelles, a way of preserving mushrooms as an essence so you have that unique flavor at hand any time.

It’s an ancient method. The only hi-tech improvement is using a food processor to chop the raw mushrooms if you don’t feel like hand chopping.

Duxelles

Ingredients:

500 grams – 1/2 lb. mushrooms, champignon or portobellos (white or brown). Rinse and wipe them dry. Make sure there’s no dirt on them.

2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

3 Tbsp. finely chopped shallot

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 tsp. dried thyme, sage, or crushed rosemary

1/4 cup dry white wine

Method:

1. Chop the mushrooms into fine dice. Or use your food processor.

2. Place mushrooms into a clean kitchen towel, one you don’t mind getting stained. Fold the towel to contain the mushrooms.

3. Wring out the mushrooms over a bowl. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Refrigerate and save the juice for soup or gravy.

4. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter gently.

5. Add mushrooms, shallots, salt, pepper, and thyme.6. Sauté until mushrooms are dry and the aroma is intense. This should take no more than 5 minutes.

7. Stir in and melt the second tablespoon of butter.

8. Add the wine. Stir until it has evaporated.

10. Remove duxelles from heat and cool.

The duxelles are ready to use right away. To store for future use, pat the paste into a strip of tin foil, roll it closed, and freeze. Just cut off tablespoon-sized portions when you need them.

So how do you use duxelles?

• Spread a thin layer of duxelles on toast that’s been lightly rubbed with a garlic clove. Now you have bruschetta.
• Flavor any soup with a tablespoon or two.
• Start an omelet by melting some duxelles in your frying pan, then pouring the eggs over them.
• Spoon some over steamed vegetables or baked potatoes.
• Stir some into your next polenta. Or use duxelles as the topping for polenta (or pasta) instead of sauce.
• Make a mushroom butter: beat butter till its soft; add duxelles and taste to adjust salt & pepper. Delicious with grilled fish.
• Add to any sauce, including tomato sauce.
• Steam sweet potatoes; drain well; melt duxelles in a frying pan and roll the cooked sweet potatoes in them till they’re slightly glazed.

You see? Duxelles add body and mushroom flavor to any food.

Chef Moshe Basson, a quiet-spoken middle-aged man with skinny braid falling over his shoulder, took up a bunch of silver-grey leaves leaves and put them in a food processor. I was watching, along with about thirty others, at a Biblical cooking class in Eucalyptus, Basson’s Jerusalem restaurant.

Za’atar pesto. Why not?

Dried za’atar as the main ingredient in an oily dip, yes. Crumbled and sprinkled over pizza or roast chicken  – all the time. But now I know I can make pesto from the fresh leaves with the juice still in them.

This is really a seasonal pesto, because fresh za’atar is available only for a few weeks. That’s now, towards the end of winter in the Middle East.

The next time I was in the shuk, I went from stand to stand looking for za’atar. No vendor had the familiar small round, light-green herb, but one picked a bunch of dark, spiky leaves out of a heap and  bruised a few to release the odor. It smelled strongly of za’atar.

Consulting with chef Basson by phone, I learned that it’s winter savory – in Hebrew, tsatrah. He says that it’s part of the thyme family, as is za’atar. I decided to make the pesto as I’d seen him make it. I didn’t know what else to do with the leaves except hang them up to dry.

My notes from the cooking event weren’t exact, so I improvised the recipe out of the basic procedure I’d scribbled down. It took about 5 minutes to make, including toasting almonds, washing and drying the za’atar leaves, and peeling  garlic. This pesto has the unmistakable taste of the Middle East in it.

Za’atar Pesto

Ingredients:

1 cup blanched almonds

2 cups fresh za’atar or winter savory leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sumac powder

3 garlic cloves

1 cup olive oil

1/4 cup lemon juice

Method:

1. Quickly toast the almonds in a dry frying pan. This should take only two minutes. Shake the pan a few times to distribute the almonds. Take it off the flame when they release a nutty, toasted aroma.

2. Rinse the za’atar leaves. Path them dry.

3. Into the food processor, put the almonds. Whizz them for half a minute.

4. Add the za’atar leaves. Process again for a minute.

5. Add the remaining ingredients and process till you have a rough sauce.

Recommended: spread some of this chunky, pungent pesto on slices of toasted baguette; top with feta cheese and put the slices into the oven so that the cheese melts.

That’s interesting, I mused. What do people eat on Shabbat, here in Petach Tikvah, June 2009? It sounded like the couple was expecting to host family or friends, and from what I heard of the menu, the food was going to be traditional. I should have stopped and just shamelessly interviewed them, but they looked to be in a hurry and even I have my limits. Still, I was headed towards the town’s biggest food supplier – the shuk. People who deal with food all week should have some great Shabbat menus, I thought. I’ll ask the vendors.

But first I popped in to ask Meiron, who deals in second-hand objects and clothing from India. His little store has always intrigued me. On the sidewalk, there are racks of thin cotton blouses; in the shop the shelves display a mix of old Judiaca, toys, tea sets, mass-produced paintings, strings of worry beads and fine crystal. Meiron is a thoughtful reader and a gourmet. We’ve sometimes talked about the cooking classes he attends with his wife. I figured he’d have something interesting to tell me about dinner, and he did.

“We made a ragoût of beef,” he said seriously. “Then I diced eggplant, deep-fried the cubes, and scattered them over the dish. A dusting of finely-chopped parsley. That’s dinner tonight – probably with pasta.”

I swallowed my saliva. “Sounds wonderful,” I said, and sallied forth again. What would the vendors in the shuk have waiting at home?

There’s a group of elderly folk who sit at the edge of the shuk and sell garden produce and home-made food. This Yemenite gentleman was selling hilbeh and zhug (fenugreek relish and hot sauce). He allowed me to take his photo but out of modesty, closed his eyes. When I asked him what’s on for dinner, he laughed and said, “Chicken soup.”

Yemenite chicken soup is deep yellow and fragrant with hawaij, a spice blend where turmeric marries black pepper and a few other spices. I could almost taste that soup as I stood talking with him..

Some vendors were cagey and wouldn’t talk about their Friday night menus. I’m sure they thought I was nuts. This lady said,

“When I get home tonight, I won’t want anything except some Nescafé (instant coffee) and some cake.”

Moshe, the fish vendor, didn’t mind my asking.

“What’s my wife cooking for tonight? Fish.”

I laughed and he said, “No, really. Denise (sea bream) baked in sauce. All kinds of fresh salads. And three kinds of rice. Plain white rice, lentils and rice, and red rice. What makes it red? I don’t know. I get home, I sit down, and I eat. My wife cooks. She’s a marvelous cook; makes everything by herself.”

For those who would like an English/Hebrew chart of the names of fish, here is one.

But the man who runs the well-known Maadaniyat HaGissim (The Brothers-in-Law Deli) gave me the most fulsome description of his Friday night meal.

“All my children come, and bring the grandchildren,” he said. “We usually seat about 15 people on a Friday night. We’re Turkish and my wife cooks all the traditional dishes from scratch. Bouri fish (grey mullet) in tomato sauce. Moussaka – but beef, not lamb. All the salads – chopped Israeli salad, choumous, stuffed vine leaves, pickled eggplant, eggplant with techinah, coleslaw, salad of marinated bell peppers, potato salad…Then she makes bourekas filled with ground beef, shnitzels, and rice. And of course the challah. Everything she makes by herself, from scratch. She is a fabulous cook.”

I looked at him with awe. “Can I meet your wife and take some lessons from her?”

As a friend of mine remarked, I think I’d have a nervous wreck if I had to cook like that every week.

By now my shopping wagon was full and heavy. Apricots, plums, string beans, fish, white cheese, choumous, big laffah pittot. Time for me to stop interfering with people’s private lives and go home to finish cooking my own Shabbat meals. So I did.

Oh, and we had chicken soup, roast chicken glazed with mandarin preserves, curried rice, string beans and almonds, beet salad, and for dessert, peach cobbler.

Sorting through my folks’ kitchen shelves before my Mom’s move, I discovered an old Jerusalem Post newspaper clipping. It was a recipe for pickle chips. I’d never considered making this, but it looked so easy that I had to try it. I did, and liked the pickles very much indeed. Now see if you like them.

The first few lines of the clipping had been cut off, so I can’t credit the author, but the date is Friday, June 30th, 1978.

Sweet & Tangy Pickle Chips

from the Jerusalem Post, author unkown

Ingredients:

1 1/2 kg. – 3 lb.  fresh, firm cucumbers

4 large onions

Kosher salt

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 1/2 cups cider vinegar

1 heaping tsp. ground turmeric

6 whole cloves

4 allspice berries

2 sticks cinnamon

3 Tblsp. – 30 grams – mustard seeds

optional: 1 -3 dried chili peppers. I used 1 tiny shatach pepper and it was enough.

Method:

Use a large pot for this preparation. The vegetables take up a lot of room.

1. Rinse, but don’t peel the cucumbers. Slice them into thin circles; set aside.

2. Peel and slice the onions thinly. Set aside.

3. In a colander or sieve placed atop a large bowl (to catch the juices), put down alternate layers of cukes and onions, salting each layer generously before adding the next.

Drape a towel over the colander to keep insects off, and leave the vegetables alone for 3 – 4 hours.

When you’re ready to prepare the pickles, do this:

1. Put all the ingredients from the sugar on down into the large pot.

2. Bring the mixture to a vigorous boil, then reduce the heat to medium.

3. Add the cukes and onions. Simmer them for 3 minutes.

4. Pour the hot mixture into a large jar – put a wooden spoon in it first, though, to prevent it shattering. Cover and allow to cool.

5. Refrigerate for 24 hours. The pickles will then be ready, although they improve with a few more days in the fridge.

The pickles will stay crunchy and good for a long time. Not that they’ll stay around a long time: if your family likes pickles, they’ll love these. If you plan to keep extras in the pantry, please follow safe canning procedure.

When  putting food up for emergencies, consider this recipe.

Do you like chutney? I do, both the mild kind and the hot, spicy kind. But if we’re talking about transforming apricots into chutney, I think it best to stick with ingredients that won’t drown the taste of the fruit. Mangoes have an assertive flavor and stand up to chilis and lots of onions very well – tomatoes, too. But for the true taste of peaches and apricots to come through in chutney, I stick with sweet spices.

Apricot Chutney

recipe from Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking

Ingredients:

2 lbs. ripe apricots – 5 cups

10 oz. brown sugar – 1 1/2 cups

1 medium onion

4 oz. golden raisins – just under 1 cup  (I only had black, so I used them – but if you use golden, the chutney’s color will be light.)

1 tsp. fresh, grated ginger root

1 Tblsp. salt

1/2 pint – 1 cup – cider vinegar

1 tsp. coriander seeds

3 cloves of garlic

Method:

1. Rinse, halve, and pit the apricots.

2. Slice the onion and garlic thinly.

3. Put all the ingredients into a large pan.  Boil till the apricots are very soft.

4. Remove the apricots from the pan with a slotted spoon and put them into clean, dry jars.

5. Boil the remaining liquid until it becomes a thick syrup.

6. Pour the syrup into the jars; cover and allow to cool before storing.

Do you get the impression that I’m on the subject of garlic? Well, I do tend to get sort of exhilarated when the fresh stuff comes out. A few short weeks to cook with it and to buy lots for drying is all there is. After the season’s over, there’s only garlic imported from China.

For Shabbat I made some roasted garlic, mentioned below. Here are more precise instructions.

Wash three garlic heads and slice the rooty bottoms off. Then  peel the first two layers off each one and set them to bake. Muffin tins are good for this. I placed my three bulbs in a little tin I had left over from Purim baking.

Here they are, drizzled with olive oil and well besprinkled with herb salt, pepper, and paprika.

The tin was covered in tin foil and popped into a medium oven alongside some other things that were roasting in there. About 40 minutes later, I poked a knife into one and saw that they were tender and ready.

I ate about half a bulb right out of the oven. Delicious. Here is the other half, smooshed and ready for other applications.

When using fresh garlic, you can just keep mashing the whole clove – central stalk part removed – and even the peels will be soft enough to eat. With dry garlic, you have to mash each clove and the meat will squirt out of the stem end.

Each bulb yields about 1 1/2 Tblsp. of soft roasted garlic.

I spread some of my garlic paté on challah.

Here are other things you can do with roasted garlic. You have to love the stuff, though.

* Stir a tablespoon into a pot of rice or quinoa before serving.

* Stir another tablespoon into the liquid part of your bread recipe. Proceed as usual, mixing in oil, egg, salt, flour, or however your recipe works. Garlic bread! Very garlic bread!

*Drop yet another tablespoon into soup. Just about any soup.Stir, allow it to simmer another 5 minutes, serve.

*For a wonderful bruschetta, toast your slices of bread, then spread a thin layer of roasted garlic on one side of each piece. Top them with a slice of tomato each and grill them for a few minutes. Or top with hot chicken livers. Or with leftover ratatouille.

Shabbat Shalom.

Usually by this time the shuk is overflowing with garlic

- woven into braids

- or just stacked in piles for discriminating shoppers.

But it was only today that I saw the first tender, purple-streaked bulbs. I’ll wait another week for the really big ones, then I’ll buy the 10 kg. that sees me through most of the year. I’ll hang my garlic up in the porch and convince everyone that we really love the way our apartment smells like salami.

One of my favorite things to do with green garlic is infuse it into a pungent, peppery olive oil, together with fresh oregano or za’atar. I can’t tell you how delicious salads are, made with this oil.

In the  above photo you see some dried sprigs of the round-leaved za’atar. It just finished for the season. The narrow-leaved variety, which is what I infused in oil, looks like this:

You must have a very clean, very dry glass jar at hand. Put a lot of green oregano or zaatar in it, and up to a whole head of fresh garlic, its tough outer membranes removed. Vary the herb as you wish, as long as it’s fresh and green. Then pour good olive oil over the herbs and garlic, to cover.

Push a chopstick or a knife through the oil to displace any air bubbles, then screw the lid on the jar and put it away in the fridge. The oil tastes good after a few days, and will stay good for about a month, gettting stronger the longer it sits. It’s important to keep it refrigerated to avoid spoilage. Also, use only a clean, dry spoon to remove oil for use.

In fact, today I made two oils, the one above for salads, and a hot one for cooking. The second oil had a 3-inch piece of fresh ginger root which I’d sliced, a handful of fresh, coarsely chopped garlic, and a couple of tiny shatach chili peppers.

A little of that ought to keep the heat high, I think.

Tender new garlic is a treat that I use with abandon. All too soon, it dries and the delicate, slightly sweet flavor becomes more pungent. Peel away the first tough layers of skin, flexible now but becoming papery as the bulbs dry out. Then you can:

* Anoint a few bulbs with olive oil, paprika and cumin, or thyme, then wrap them up in tin foil and roast them. Or tuck them into the pan in which you’re roasting a chicken. Roasted fresh garlic is food for princes. How do you eat it? Push the root end of each clove with the flat of a table knife, and the meat will slip out of the stem end. Spread the garlic paté on whatever’s on your plate that takes your fancy. Some people adore roasted garlic on challah, some like to cover their roast chicken with a thin layer.

* Crush a few cloves with za’atar spice (the dried kind, with sesame seeds in it) – add salt, dip your bread into it.

Confession: a favorite springtime snack of mine goes like this: I crush the garlic, scrape it into a small dish, and stir olive oil into it. Then I’ll add salt and pepper and eat the whole thing with a pitta. I defy any vampire to get me after that.

* Slice it thickly – lots of it, from half to a whole bulb – and layer it into lasagna or a casserole.

* Make garlic butter with it. Allow the butter to become a little soft, add crushed garlic and some lemon juice and salt to taste. Mix it well, cover, and allow the butter to mellow for an hour before using. No measurements given because it all depends on how much butter you’re making and how garlicky, lemony, or salty you like it.

* Garlic soup is light, warming, and a good base for other soups.  Make a light stock from an onion, a washed but unpeeled potato, 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery, a ripe tomato, parsley (or nettles), and salt. The vegetables should be sliced thinly. Simmer this for an hour or a little longer. Strain the broth. To this clear liquid, add all the cloves from a cleaned head of fresh garlic, a sprig of thyme (1/4 tsp), a small bay leaf, 2 Tblsp. olive oil. Simmer for 1/2 hour. Remove the garlic cloves and bay leaf and serve steaming hot, with buttered toast triangles.

A fancy touch is to roll out some frozen puff pastry and cut it out to cover oven-proof soup bowls. Ladle a serving of garlic soup into each bowl, cover the bowls with circles of puff pastry, and put them in the oven to bake.  It’s fun to break the crust and push it into the soup – tasty, too.

If you find yourself with a stalk or two of fresh garlic, peel away the first, dirty layers of it and put it in soup. It’s not for eating, just for flavor, like bay leaves.

Winter is  a good time to make stock. A few mornings ago I put up a chicken stock and left it simmering on the stove  while I went out to run errands in the rain and the wind. By evening, when I returned all  cold and grumpy and achey and feeling sorry for myself, there was the most appetizing aroma in the apartment. I walked straight to the stove and drank a cup of stock just as it was, right out of the pot. Immediately I felt warm again. My bad mood and aches fell away from me and I was able to smile at my family. Mineral-rich stock is  a powerful ally to health, keeping immunities up and hastening recovery from illness any time.

With good stock ready at hand,  flavorful home-made soups, sauces and gravies are a snap to prepare. You can go from strained, clear stock to Greek avegolemono soup, or velouté sauce – or good old American gravy – in a matter of minutes. In fact, some of the batch I’m cooking up right now is going to make up the gravy for a savory turkey pie. Classic recipes call for veal and beef bones, but having fallen into the Israeli way of eating more poultry and less beef, I  find that turkey or chicken stock works very well.

The basis for today’s stock is turkey necks. At another time I might have used chicken wings or the carcass of a large roasted chicken. But peering into my freezer, where I’m always finding delightful surprises, I discovered a tidy kilo of turkey necks.  I must have put it away for stock.

This is the kind of recipe I love. About three minutes of preparation, then go about your business and let time do most of the work. Although this post calls it Turkey Neck Stock, you can use the meat and bones of other poultry, beef, or lamb, either cooked leftovers or raw. Add layers of flavors as your taste dictates. The basic vegetables remain the same.

Turkey Neck Stock

Yield: about 1 1/2 liters

Ingredients:

1 kg. turkey necks

1 onion, washed but not peeled

2 celery stalks, washed, trimmed and chopped into thirds or quarters

1 leek

2 garlic cloves

2 carrots, peeled and chopped into quarters

1 tomato, halved

1 bay leaf

1 parsley root or a parsnip (parsnips are rare here)

1 Tblsp. of apple cider or balsamic vinegar

A dollop of good soy sauce

A handful of papery onion skins

Optional ingredients to add at the last hour of the cook: a few dried mushrooms, a pinch of thyme or marjoram

Optional to add at the last half-hour: parsley or coriander leaves, nettles or other wild edibles. If using, cover the pot now so that the goodness of these fragile leaves won’t evaporate out. This is also the time to add small amounts of other vegetables you like but which won’t stand up to long cooking, like zucchini.

Notes before beginning:

The onion skins give a deep color to the broth and add valuable nutrients.

My turkey necks were frozen, so I put them in water to cover and started the cook, adding more water and the other ingredients when the necks had thawed out.  When using fresh meat – not necessarily raw, it can be the bones and pan juices from cooked meat – just put everything into the pot together.

Don’t allow the stock to boil at any time. The bones won’t release their nutritious elements if they cook in boiling liquid.

No salt goes into the stock. You’ll be straining the stock then using it as a base for other dishes that will need additional salt. Kosher meat and bones have some salt in them anyway.

Method:

Put all the basic ingredients into a big pot and cover them with enough water to submerge everything.

Bring the liquid up to a simmer, then keep the stock on the lowest possible flame, so that the water barely moves.

Skim off the greyish matter that forms on the surface of the broth. It’s harmless enough, but the stock will be cloudy if it’s not removed. You’ll need to do this once in a while over the next hour or two. If’ I’m organized enough at night, I start the stock while I’m fixing dinner, skim it once in a while till I go to bed, then leave it undisturbed till morning.

Once the scum has stopped forming, set the lid over the pot so that it’s partly uncovered, and walk away. The longer it cooks, the better. I like to leave it alone till the vegetables are very tender and the meat separates from the bone easily. This takes about 6 hours. You’ll know that the stock is approaching readiness when a fine, appetizing odor perfumes the kitchen.

When you’re satisfied that the stock is done, remove it from the flame and let it cool down. Strain it through a sieve. Put aside what you’ll be using up presently, and freeze the rest. It  will keep up to a week in the fridge.

You may want to remove any fat from it before freezing by chilling it and spooning the fat off.  Turkey necks have almost no fat on them, so I won’t be doing that today, but if I were using leftover roast lamb or duck, I certainly would.

So what am I going to do with this liquid treasure?

• Part of it will be the base for gravy in a savory pot pie.
• I’ll add a piece of two of chicken plus a fat slice of pumpkin, some cilantro and some salt to the rest, and let it simmer, covered, for about an hour. That will make the rich, golden Shabbat soup that my family loves.
• At least a couple of cups will go down the way I drank stock the other day – out of a teacup, standing right there by the stove.
• I could refrain from drinking stock as if it were tea and keep it for cooking rice instead of using plain water.
• Or make a small amount of sauce to spoon over steamed vegetables.
• If there’s some stock left over, I’ll freeze it by half-cups and cupfuls. That’s the most effective way. You won’t need to pull out and thaw a whole quart of the stuff for a recipe that only calls for half a cup.

The meat can be taken off the necks and added back to the strained stock. But I think I’ll make it into kreplach filling this time.

The photo below shows some of the stock’s gelatinous layer, which comes from the bones and gives the liquid a rich mouthfeel. Apart from how good for your hair and fingernails and joints all that good stuff is.

This article expands on the medicinal properties of well-made stock.

Another appreciated Purim gift is liqueurs. Few of my friends venture to buy anything but chocolate liqueur or a really ghastly banana concoction you see at weddings occasionally – but all love a slender bottle of limoncello or strawberry liqueur. It’s so easy to make liqueur: all you need is to put together fruit, sugar, and vodka.

These things require packaging, so if you want to surprise and impress your circle with a fabulous yellow tomato jam or a kiwi liqueur, now’s the time to shop for jars and bottles. Just remember that foods with vinegar in them corrode metal tops, so chutneys and flavored vinegars need containers with plastic tops. For a finished look, I like to print out labels identifying the product, with the date and a brief Purim message and just glue them on, or make tags to attach. But I’m not going to go all artsy-craftsy on you right now. I want to talk about …

Apple and Walnut Chutney

yield: 3 cups – 750 ml.

Ingredients:

450 ML. – 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar

225 grams – 1 1/2  cup sugar

4 Granny Smith apples

3 medium onions – 2 cups chopped finely

110 grams – 3/4 cup raisins

1 tsp. fresh grated ginger root, or dried powdered

1 tsp. mustard seed

1 tsp. mild curry powder

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper or a small piece of chili pepper

1/2 cup walnuts, broken

Method:

1. Measure out all the ingredients.

2 . Peel, core, and finely chop the apples and onions.

3. Bring the vinegar and sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

4. Add all the other ingedients except the walnuts.

5. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, till most of the liquid has evaporated and the chutney thickens.

6. Stir the walnut pieces in.

Store in warm, sterilized jars. This chutney will keep 1 year. Once opened, keep it in the fridge.

This is such an easy dish. You don’t need to make a lot, just choose two or three colors of ripe bell peppers. Have ready a handful of basil leaves, olive oil, 1 clove of garlic per pepper, salt and black pepper. If basil isn’t in season,  a dusting of oregano does very well instead.

Rinse your peppers; slice them into wide strips.

Sauté them till they are tender, over a medium flame, in olive oil. Stir once in a while to prevent scorching.  This should take about 15 minutes.

Peel and chop the garlic coarsely. Add it to the peppers and stir again.   Let the garlic cook in the scant juices of the peppers, but keep a sharp eye on it so it won’t burn.

Season with herbs and salt and black pepper.

In 2 or 3 minutes more, it’s done.

Serve these savory, colorful peppers warm or cold as a piquant note to your meal. Or layer them into a vegetarian sandwich with feta cheese and a fat slice of ripe tomato. Or make bruschetta with slices of toasted bread and serve as an appetizer.