Wine Party Etceteras

All last week I posted some wine party recipes, so today I figured I'd take pause and mention all the yummy food that was there but sans recipes (because they're either from cookbooks or I just don't know them). So a hat's off to the following dishes.

EGGPLANT CAVIAR


As another whore-devore, I decided to tackle an Eggplant Caviar recipe from The Artful Vegan cookbook. It was a bit more elaborate, and I stuck to the recipe pretty closely (except for substituting brown lentils for the black (no time to try and track those down), so I shan't reproduce it here. Suffice it to say, it consists of broiled a) eggplant, b) red pepper, c) onion, and d) garlic along with lentils and a whole bunch of spices and other things. This picture is ugly. It is difficult to take attractive pictures of dips. *sigh*

Quite honestly, I wasn't a big fan of this dip anyways. It just was kind of bland to me. *BUT* I blame not the cookbook because I suspect the black lentils would've helped some with the absent luxuriant flavoring. Plus, folks liked it and wolfed-down a whole bowl's worth, so maybe it was just me.

E'S TOFU TRIANGLES


E made these using the "Italian Tofu Steaks recipe that he snarked from Vegan with a Vengeance. They were a nice finger-food, are very simple to make, and they showcased one of the wine-party wines which was used in the marinade. Needless to say, they got wolfed down very quickly.

And finally...

LITTLE CRACKERLY THINGS WITH TOFU CHEESE AND YUM


These yumtastic little nibblers were courtesy of the lovely Ms. Dorklepork. From what I could piece together, they consisted of a) crackers topped with b) little mini portabella black bean patties, c) tiny chunks of mango, d) this super-brilliant tofu cheese (which I am in the process of making a batch of as we speak as well), and e) cilantro(?) tossed in the broiler for a few.

They were most excellent--the cheese had a bit of a feta-y kick to it, and the mango balanced it out with its delicate sweetness. Num num.

Woot woot to finger foods!