Eggplants roasting on an open fire

As the weather has been improving in Chicago, I have had an increasing hankering for different salads and spreads. Motivated by this, I have been making a lot of eggplant lately in a new (for me way): Cooking directly over the flame from our gas burner. It makes a really great smokey flavor. I just hold it with a pair of tongs and turn it as it cooks.

Below are some dishes I've made with it. The first has a southeast Asian twist, and the second is more Greek or Turkish, like baba ganoush without the tahini.

Lime-y eggplant spread

1 lb eggplant

1 lime juiced

2 in. ginger diced

1 Tbsp soy

2 dashes toasted sesame oil

1 dash rice vinegar

1/4 tsp honey

Rice noodles

Spring mix

1 tomato sliced

1 red pepper julienned

2 scallions diced

Roast the eggplant over a burner. Peel the blackened skin. Mash it. Add the next six ingredients. Can be made a day ahead.

Cook the rice noodles. Combine rice noodles, spring mix, tomato, red pepper and scallion with the eggplant mixture and serve.

Decadent eggplant spread

1 lb eggplant

lots of olive oil

Roast the eggplant over a burner. Peel the blackened skin. Mash eggplant with olive oil. Keep adding olive oil to the eggplant until it absorbs as much as it can. The mixture may turn whitish. If, when you open the container the next day, a lot of the oil has separated out, dont worry, it means you did it right.

Weird corn salad

This next salad was based on the fact that corn was on sale and I love fresh corn. One can make all sorts of great corn salads that are more or less bean-y and more or less salsa-ish. I wanted to do something different. It ended up tasting good because all of the components were good but it is not all the way there yet.

3 ears corn (these were smallish)

1/2 lb eggplant

14 grape or cherry tomatoes quartered

15 mint leaves finely chopped.

1/2 lime

Cook the corn. Cut it off the cob and let cool.

Slice eggplant and salt. Let sit for about 20 minutes. Rinse and then dice. Fry in oil. Put between paper towels to remove oil and let cool.

When cool combine the ingredients and squeeze the lime over the top.

Lessons:

Ev suggested removing the eggplant. She did not think that its texture worked. She also suggested adding black beans and avocado and maybe some basil. This would end up as a take on the classic bean-y corn salad with mint and basil in place of cilantro and grape tomatoes instead of usual tomatoes. It would probably be pretty good (classics get that way for a reason).

I, however, want to go big. Ditch the tomatoes (too acidic). Roast (or grill) the diced eggplant. Juice the lime separately and add honey to it. Add some diced chicken. I still feel like it needs something else. Can you help me?

We have not tried either of these variations.

Two coconut vinegar recipes

A Chinese grocery store opened up near where Ev tutors and I have reaped the benefits,
namely coconut vinegar. Below are two dishes I made with it (the sauce is basically the
same). The cabbage bowl was colorful and fun, but the wraps are the star.
Cabbage salad bowl:

Dressing:
Coconut vinegar
Soy sauce
Minced fresh ginger
Minced garlic
Honey

Rice noodles
Tofu skins

Red cabbage, thinly sliced
Bean sprouts
Carrots, julienned
Snow peas
Pea shoots or other green sprouts

Combine dressing ingredients to taste. Cook rice noodles as per package directions. Cook tofu skins in a pan with some oil. Add some soy sauce and cook for 1 more minute. Combine all ingredients and dress.

Lettuce Wraps:

Dressing:
Coconut vinegar
Soy sauce
Minced fresh ginger
Minced garlic
Honey
Sriracha sauce

Vegetable oil for sauteeing
½ onion, thinly sliced
1/3 eggplant, julienned
3 oz shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
6 0z tofu skin, thinly sliced
1 red pepper, thinly sliced

1/2 cucumber, sliced
Several cherry tomatoes, sliced
Snow peas

Romaine lettuce leaves

Combine dressing ingredients to taste.
Slice everything but the lettuce thinly like match sticks. Saute the onion and eggplant until eggplant is tender. Add the shiitakes and tofu skins and saute another five minutes or so. Add the pepper and saute for about three more minutes. Dress with sauce. To eat, put a little bit of everything in a lettuce leaf and wrap it up as neatly as you can. (Good luck!)

Eggplant Salad II

Here is a little eggplant salad I made yesterday after a dry run the week before. I initially planned for it to be a cold salad, but Ev found it a little slimy, so now it will be served warm and over rice.

1 large eggplant (about 1 1/2 lbs?)
1 red pepper
salt
oil

Slice the eggplant into about 1/2 to 1 inch slices. Liberally salt the slices and let sit for about 1/2 hour. Rinse eggplant and cube the slices. Slice red peppers and put in an oven safe dish, oil and put in the oven at 400 for about 25 minutes or until done. I stirred every 8 minutes or so.

2 Tbsp soy
1 Tsp honey
3 inches ginger finely diced
2 scallions sliced
2 Tbsp fresh basil

Combine the above ingredients. Pour about half over the finished eggplant mixture. The rest is for putting over at the table if you want more. Serve over rice (jasmine is nice) and maybe garnish with basil.

Eggplant Salad

Here is an eggplant salad from the Moosewood New Classics cookbook. It is really good plus it is a pleasant way to eat eggplant on a hot summer day.

5 cups peeled eggplant (in 1 inch cubes)
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 large cucumber (peeled)
1 pepper
2 tomatoes
2 scallions

Bake the cubed eggplant on 450 for about 25 minutes stirring every 10 minutes. The should be soft and diminished when the are done. Slice the scallion, cucumber, tomatoes and pepper.

Prepare marinade:
1/4 cup lime juice
1 Tbsp lime zest
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 Tbsp fish or soy sauce
1 or 2 Tbsp fresh mint
1/4 cup chopped Thai basil
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro
chili to taste

Whisk marinade and add to eggplant. Let sit for a bit (they say an hour). Combine with the salad. We like to serve this with noodles (say rice noodles or vermicelli). In this form I find it can be a meal (though you may want to add some tofu for protein). It can be good with a bit more eggplant (which is the star) and marinade.

Enjoy!

Eggplant with four basils

At the farmers' market a couple weeks ago, I found these beautiful tiny eggplants:
You can tell they are tiny because that's only two pounds. I should have included some sort of reference item in the picture. They were reasonably priced, a rarity at Houston farmers' markets, and I couldn't resist them. I knew I wanted to do something special with them. They couldn't be relegated to a pizza topping or baba ganoush, as delightful as it is, or a stir-fry bursting with other flavors. I had never made eggplant basil before, but I knew it was just what I wanted. When we go to a Chinese restaurant, Jon and I almost always get an order of it, but I had never tried making it at home. I looked at a couple recipes online, but they seemed too involved, so I just followed my instincts and made this up.
I used one pound just in case it was awful. It wasn't, so I made it again, with some variations, with the second pound a few days later. This week, I bought another basket of beautiful tiny eggplants and plan on making this dish again tonight. I used dark soy sauce the first time, which is why it's almost black in the picture, and light soy sauce the second time. Both are good. Dark soy sauce is a little thicker and sweeter. I also added tofu skins the second time. They were fantastic, but I also like the simplicity of the dish without it. I call this eggplant with four basils because I have four kinds of basil growing on my balcony garden. Thai basil, with its anisey kick, is the best, but unfortunately my Thai basil plant is petering out, so I supplemented it with my normal sweet basil, purple globe basil, and mystery basil that just started growing in one of my pots about a month ago. It doesn't look like any of the other ones. I think maybe it's a hybrid of Thai and sweet basil that somehow got started by being near my other basil plants, but I don't know. I love mysteries.

Eggplant with four basils
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 lb eggplant, preferably tiny succulent ones, halved or quartered lengthwise and cut into 2-inch chunks (if you're using regular supermarket eggplant, go for 2x1x1-inch pieces)
4 oz tofu skin, cut into 1-inch cubes, optional
1/2 cup basil or a mix of four basils, divided, roughly chopped if leaves are large
3 tbsp soy sauce, either dark or light

Heat oils in a wok or large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add eggplant pieces and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 4 minutes. Add tofu skins, 2 tbsp basil, soy sauce, and 2 tbsp water. Cover and steam until eggplant is tender, about 5 minutes more. Add more water if the pan dries out too much. Remove from heat and stir in most of the remaining basil. Serve over rice with a little extra fresh basil on top.

A tale of two pizzas

Not much of a recipe here. I just like pizza and want to share two pizzas Jon and I made a while ago. Our dough recipe makes two pizzas' worth of dough, so we usually do two days of pizza at a time. In case you need it, the dough recipe is in this post.
The first pizza starts with an eggplant. An eggplant that we grew on our balcony.
We decided to do an eggplant pizza with mozzarella and tomatoes. The eggplant was small, so we sliced it very thinly to get as much of the pizza covered as possible. The seeds made an angel pattern in the middle of each slice.We brushed the eggplant slices on each side with some olive oil and broiled in the toaster oven until they were brown before layering them on the pizza with tomato and mozzarella slices.
Jon put some mushrooms on his half before it went into the oven. After baking for about 20 minutes, it was done.
We scattered some basil on it right after it came out of the oven. Yum! The eggplant slices were good, although all the other goodies probably diluted the eggplanty awesomeness.

The next night we had pizza again. This time we wanted to use up some eggplant-tomato sauce I had made earlier in the week. On a whim, Jon suggested putting some kale on top too. It was a brilliant idea! We put it on in the last five minutes or so of cooking. Jon's half, once again, has mushrooms on it. I elected just to go with just sauce, cheese, and kale. Kale dries out very quickly in the oven and gets a nice chewy consistency, with little patches of crunchiness near the curly ends of the leaves. And the flavor is concentrated by the oven. It works very well.