Eggplants in Seattle, Episode 2: Russian Eggplant Caviar

Last week we were invited for dinner at my uncle’s girlfriend’s stylish downtown loft. Marina is from Russia, hence the dinner was a blur of delicious Russian dishes.

Including a picture-perfect plum tart and piroshki [that contained no eggplant and will be featured regardless because they were so yummy].

Marina also made an eggplant dish that she called “eggplant caviar.” It consists of eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and parsley, chopped up and simmered into a caponata-like salad. The flavor was similar to imam bayildi, but with less tomato-ness.

Here’s how to make it:

Cube the eggplants and chop the onions, carrots, tomatoes, etc.

Garlic choppin'.

After sauteeing the eggplants in oil, with salt added, toss in the onions.

Then add the carrots and garlic a little while later.

The author demonstrates proper stirring technique.

After the eggplant-onion-carrots mixture has cooked down, add the tomatoes.

A little while later, add chopped parsley.

Simmer the mixture with a closed pot until it looks like this. Then season with more salt and black pepper, to taste.

The result. Like most Russian dishes, it is simple yet delicious. (I say "yet" because I'm accustomed to putting a million spices in my food. But it's not always necessary -- a well-salted dish is often just as tasty.)

Eggplants in Seattle, Episode 1: Chinese

I recently returned from a trip to the Seattle area, land of really good Chinese restaurants. I tried two eggplant dishes in particular that were incredibly delicious (and, in the second case, somewhat unusual).

At Szechuan Bean Flower, we ate an excellent rendition of eggplant with garlic sauce.

The dish, while delicious, wasn’t unlike other eggplant-with-garlic-sauces that I’ve had before. But the second Chinese restaurant we went to, Yea's Wok, serves an unusual variation.

This dish contains eggplant, strips of hard tofu, inoki mushrooms, carrots, and fresh basil leaves. The ingredients are stir-fried together with a light salty sauce. But while the Yea’s dish was more interesting, I’d recommend Bean Flower as a more vegetarian-friendly option. At Yea's Wok, there are few vegetarian dishes and we were accidentally served meat, despite requesting tofu substitution. Bean Flower, on the other hand, has an entire veggie section. And also a huge mirror on one wall, which I find is a prerequisite for good Chinese food.

More Seattle eggplants coming up!

Eggplants of Chinatown, Episode 1: Chongqing eggplant

Chicago’s Chinatown is great in the following ways:*

1) There is a minimum of two really good restaurants. I only ever go to two of them, and my occasional forays into other restaurant territory have been disappointing. But I only need two restaurants, because each one has a menu the approximate length of Beowulf.

2) Unlike Philadelphia’s Chinatown, Chicago’s is not weirdo-hobo-land. No offense to the homeless, but you know those really weird hobos – the ones who have one giant dreadlock and mutter incoherent things while banging their feet against their ears? In Philadelphia, Chinatown is their main hangout.

3) Unlike Philly’s, Chicago’s Chinatown is not filthy as an unwashed hipster. Instead, it is clean as a washed hipster.

4) The best bubble tea of my life at Joy Yee. And I have eaten/drunk a great deal of bubble tea over the years.

The two restaurants I patronize, Lao Sze Chuan and Lao Beijing, are owned by the same chef, Tony Hu, who also operates several other regional-style restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown.

Fortunately for this blog and my belly, each Lao offers several vegetarian eggplant dishes, of which I have sampled four (and three of which went unphotographed, pre-blog). In the ongoing Eggplants of Chinatown series, I’ll provide photos and descriptions of my eggplant encounters as I gradually sample every vegetarian eggplant dish in these two restaurants.

It would sound more impressive if I said, “every eggplant dish in Chinatown,” or “every eggplant dish in Chicago.” Now THAT would be a blog, like Julie Powell's food quest. But no, alas, I am tired of being disappointed by restaurants that are not owned by Tony Hu. So I’m sticking to Lao for nao.

Today I went for lunch at Lao Sze Chuan, where eggplants abound.

The restaurant's cute interior.

I asked the waitress for a recommendation. She suggested the eggplant with garlic sauce, which was too boring-white-person-eating-Chinese-food for me, so I rudely ignored her and ordered the Chongqing style. It came out looking like this:

The eggplants, as you can see, have been peeled, etched with a cross-hatch pattern, and deep fried whole. They are topped with a mild white sauce and fresh hot peppers.

While this dish looked beautiful, it wasn’t quite as delicious as I expected. There were two shortcomings. First, the sauce was a bit boring, tasting of nothing but salt and sugar (no garlic, ginger, chili, soy, etc.). And second, the eggplants gradually exuded so much oil that I ended up meticulously spooning an entire dishful of grease from the surface. I believe I ended up consuming more oil than jasmine tea. And by the time I brought the dish home, the eggplants had oozed so much oil that there was a layer half an inch thick floating on the surface. This is the problem, I find, with eggplants cooked in a deep fryer. So maybe I should have ordered the boring-white-person garlic sauce after all, which I know from past visits to be delicious and not terribly greasy -- but then again, it isn’t nearly as photogenic as these long, squid-like eggplant pieces.

* I like to make lists in all my entries because:

1) As a graduate student, list-making has become one of my primary life skills.

2) Humor is made easy by surprising readers with an unexpected list item.

3) Fishcakes. 

Fun With Marinade

One reason eggplant is America’s favorite vegetable (I wish) is that it absorbs strong flavors like a sponge. This makes it particularly conducive to marinating. I’ve found that eggplant is delicious soaked in just about any sauce, dressing or brine: barbecue sauce, lemon mustard dressing, balsamic vinaigrette, Asian-style soy marinade, tzatziki, you name it. (Although... don’t name Hollandaise sauce. Or Thousand Island dressing. That just sounds gross.) Here’s a tip: rather than marinating eggplant while it’s raw and then cooking, as one does with meats, roast/grill/sauté the eggplant in oil first and then let it soak up the marinade afterwards. Otherwise, the raw eggplant becomes waterlogged and soggy, acquiring a weird rubbery consistency when cooked.

I recently made a batch of pico de gallo (a.k.a. fresh tomato salsa). This salsa has one major flaw: after only a day or so it turns into a few islands of tomato pulp surrounded by a sea of watery juice. This salsa-juice is very tasty -- like a strongly-seasoned gazpacho – but I usually end up just pouring it down the drain because it makes the chips/tortillas soggy.

And yet... there’s actually no need to waste such tasty saucejuice. Typically when I utilize this precious liquid, I pour it into a batch of chili. And the other day I thought... why not make it a marinade?

The day before I had bought these two pudgy heirloom eggplants from the farmer’s market.

 I cut them in thin slices, roasted them, and dumped them in the p.d.g. juice. There wasn’t quite enough marinade, so I doused them in hot sauce, as you see in the photo.

In the above photo, the eggplant rounds are perfectly formed and picturesque. By the next morning, they had soaked up the juice and looked somewhat vomitrocious:

... but tasted delicious. I made an open-faced sandwich with cream cheese, ajvar, pico de eggplant, and capers on top.

Isn't it odd how the eggplant looks like slimy cured meat?

I then ate less manicured versions of this combination for many subsequent lunches.

About ajvar: this Turkish spread contains eggplant, red peppers, and... other stuff, but mainly eggplant and red peppers. The inclusion of eggplant means that I should probably make it from scratch, but I’m in the habit of always having a jar of the storebought kind in the fridge. It works great as:

1) A bread/crackers spread to accompany any sort of mild cheese, like cream cheese or chevre or smoked mozzarella

2) Pasta sauce (no joke! I put it straight on my pasta)

3) An ingredient in tomato-based sauces and soups to make them taste richer

4) An addition to salad dressings

5) An addition to Asian sauces and marinades

6) So many things OMNOMNOM

Seriously, ajvar is that good.

Here is a sideways picture of ajvar that I can't seem to rotate because lately, when I rotate photos on my computer, the files mysteriously disappear. It's part of my tech curse, in which bizarre things go wrong with every piece of technology I touch.