I have this habit of saving recipes that I will probably never try. I have a grocery bag full of them, and I occasionally go through the bag and weed out the ones that sounded good when I clipped them but now no longer appeal to me. And as I go through this recipe purge, I usually find one or two that re-pique my interest. Thus was the situation this last week, when I stumbled upon a 1995 recipe out of Bon Appétit for a "Grilled Vegetable Sandwich".
Recipe in hand, I diligently made out my shopping list and just as diligently went out and procured the necessary ingredients, as I don't typically have a fresh supply of shitake mushrooms, ciabatta bread, and eggplant laying about the house.
I was, shall we say, less than impressed. However, here I was with all this eggplant and a bag full of mushrooms (although, due to a dearth of shitake at the grocery store, I had settled on baby portabella). I decided to tweak the recipe a bit and try it again, and this is what I came up with.
1 bulb of garlic (optional)
3-5 T. olive oil
1 red or yellow bell pepper
1 eggplant (bell or Asian okay)
1 zucchini
1/2 c. mushrooms (your choice)
1/2 c. sliced onions
1/2 t. thyme
2-3 leaves of fresh basil
1 fresh tomato
1 T. balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
whole wheat tortillas
butter
I note that the garlic is optional, but really, everything on here is optional. If you hate onions, for example, leave them out, or replace them with some vegetable you love. If you love mushroom, add more. The reason why I say optional for the garlic is because it is a whole additional step that is not critical to the success of the wrap. But let's go on....
Preheat your oven to 400F.
Place the garlic (or if you want to have some roasted garlic on hand for other occasions, place several bulbs of garlic) into a baking sheet. Sprinkle with approx 1 T. olive oil, then bake for 40 minutes to an hour, or until garlic is soft. (If you like the result, I highly recommend getting a clay garlic roaster. I have one and use it often.) Remove bulb and set aside.
Increase oven temp to broil.
Cut red bell pepper in half vertically and remove seeds. Place bell pepper, cut side down on the baking sheet. Place under broiler and broil until skin is charred, approximately 10 minutes. Put pepper in a paper bag and set aside for about another ten minutes, or until cool enough to handle. Remove skin from pepper and cut flesh into strips.
Slice eggplant and zucchini into strips and place on baking sheet with onion and mushroom. (Or, if you are like me and realize that all your baking sheets were in the bottom drawer of the oven you had hauled away, improvise and use aluminum foil). Drizzle with 1 T. olive oil. Season both sides with salt, pepper, thyme.
Stick that under your broiler for about 12-15 minutes, turning once, until nicely cooked.
(You may notice that this particular photo above shows scallions, not onions. This was from the original recipe, and I found the taste of scallions didn't do much to improve the sandwich. I made my second batch with sliced white onion, so you may see pictures in which the onions and scallions magically interchange, depending on when I took the photograph.)
Combine 1 T. balsamic vinegar with 1 T. olive oil and set aside.
Take one or two cloves of roasted garlic and smash them onto the whole wheat tortilla. Add a little butter, if you'd like. I thought it added a nice creamy texture to the wrap, but it was not in the original recipe. If you want to keep it vegan, omit the butter. (On the flip side, if you are a confirmed carnivore, this mix would be fantastic with grilled beef!)
The original recipe calls for then layering your basil, fresh tomato, and roasted veggies (including bell pepper) on the bread (now tortilla), then drizzling with the balsamic vinegar/olive oil, so I tried it that way at first. Pro: the veggies pretty much stay put and don't fall out of the wrap. Con: you don't necessarily get a homogenous mix of tastes unless you are very strategic with your veggie arrangement. As you can see in the pic, there would be sections of this wrap that would include twice as much zucchini as other sections.
Which is why I decided to do this: after roasting, I chopped all the veggies, the fresh tomato, and the basil up into roughly similarly sized chunks, and drizzled the balsamic vinegar/olive oil into the blend. I preferred it this way, not only to address the taste, but because I had veggies left over, so it made it very easy to just put that mix in a container and use it again, vs. having to pick out and arrange strips, cut up more fresh veggies, and drizzle. This way, I can quickly just scoop the mix out onto the tortilla and be on my way.
As you can see, it makes for a more homogenized blend, although the veggies have more of a tendency to fall out when you pick the wrap up. I had a LOT of veggies left over, btw, probably enough to make several more sandwiches, so keep that in mind and adjust your measurements accordingly. I suspect this mix will last just a few days in the fridge and probably doesn't freeze well. I may try freezing some just to find out, but I think it will turn the fresh tomato into mush. Next time, I might reserve the fresh tomatoes and slice them on at the end.
So, there you have it. Pretty easy, pretty healthy, and pretty tasty. And that, dare I say it, is a wrap.
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