Irving puts together a very useful combination of herbs and spices that we keep in the pantry and which he renews when required. We use it mostly for pizza-making, but it does have its uses in other dishes. Yesterday, for example, when I put together a casserole featuring eggplant, spinach and goats-milk cheese. Here's the ingredient list in tablespoons: 2 oregano, 1 basil, 1/2 fennel seeds crushed, 1/2 dried thyme, 1 garlic powder; 1 cayenne flakes.

I was looking for some kind of platform I could use that would be built on those ingredients [eggplant, goat's cheese/spinach]. I found plenty on line featuring either eggplant and cheese or spinach and cheese, but among the features in those recipes were eggs, and I wanted to make something with no eggs included, since Irving had eaten two eggs with his breakfast already that day.

It was he, actually, who found the basic recipe I would alter, that had eggplant and cheese in it. I just added the spinach. He went through one of the cookbooks in our kitchen library of cookbooks; this one titled Cooking in Colour, 700 recipes for every occasion. It has an excellent vegetarian selection. I wanted to focus that way on yesterday's evening meal because the evening before we had a small sirloin roast, Yorkshire pudding, steamed green beans prefaced by a small tomato/cucumber/avocado/snowpea salad, and this was to make amends.

I started off with the eggplant, slicing it into rounds, placing them in a glass dish, salted them and covered and weighed them down, while we went out for a ravine walk. On our return I tipped out the resulting moisture, washed the slices free of salt, dried them and dipped them in fine breadcrumbs. And then they were fried brown-crisp for a few minutes on either side in olive oil; finally placed on paper towelling to remove any excess oil.

I washed the spinach leaves and steamed them until they were limp. Then chopped up two garlic buds and a medium-size onion and stirred them until almost transparent in more olive oil. I chopped up six medium-to-small tomatoes and placed them into the pan with the onion-garlic, added plenty of dried sweet basil, and Irving's herb mixture as well, stirring it all until the tomato was stewed and the fragrance divine.

I cut up a small log of goat's cheese into crumbly pieces and then began assembling the casserole; spinach on the bottom, eggplant over, and Parmesan sprinkled over the eggplant. Then came the crumbled goat's cheese, and over it the onion-tomato mixture. Remaining spinach was sprinkled over the tomato, and the top sprinkled again with Parmesan. This was refrigerated for a few  hours, and at dinnertime the cooled casserole was popped into a toaster-oven for about a half-hour until it was piping-hot and bubbling. 

The verdict? Absolutely perfect. The melding of flavours and textures was indeed superb, a recipe I'll repeat time and again. It deviated from the original with the use of Irving's mixed herbs, and using fresh, not canned tomatoes, goat's milk, not mozzarella, and we were more than pleased with the results.

With fresh, excellently moist and flavourful peaches from Chile (!) sliced into dessert bowls, dinner was lovely.