Thai Green Curry Soup with White Eggplants

Yesterday at my favorite produce store I saw white eggplants for the first time. They were about the size of baby eggplants or Italian eggplants, but with an intriguing white skin.

A while back I learned an easy shortcut for making delicious green curry OR green curry soup, so I decided to try using eggplants in the mix. The result, which only took about 20 minutes and tasted wonderful:

Most grocery stores sell jars of Thai curry paste, which tastes just like a restaurant-style curry when mixed with coconut milk. (I'm not convinced that most Thai restaurants make their own homemade curry seasoning, since the at-home version tastes so similar.) My favorite brand is Thai Kitchen, but there are usually lots to choose from.*

Since eggplants don't taste good when boiled in broth, I cooked them first in a pan. For an extra flavor-kick, I added a dash of lemongrass curry spice mix that I received as a gift -- but since that's not a common ingredient in the average kitchen, it's fine to omit it.

Tossed in the pan, before I added the oil. Use LOTS of oil. It's better that your curry is on the oily side, but with eggplants fully cooked, than rubbery undercooked eggplant. Most Asian restaurants deep-fry their eggplant slices, which gives them that creamy texture.

After sauteeing for a good long time: oil-soaked, browned at the edges, soft all the way through. I found the skin on the white eggplants to be tougher than usual, and the eggplant flesh to be a bit rubbery by nature, but the flavor is very sweet.

Remove the eggplants from the pan (to ensure that all the veggies cook enough -- no raw onion!). Saute slivers of onion and bell pepper until they're cooked the way you like them. Add the eggplant back into the pan and toss in some cubes of firm tofu. Add a dollop of curry paste (use to taste -- pastes vary in strength, so I won't give quantities here), and a dollop of broth paste or sprinkle of broth powder for extra flavor.

Here's where things get tricky: if you want this to be a curry, you can just add coconut milk, mix together, add more paste or broth if the flavor requires, and be done with it.

Just coconut curry, only a small amount of water. Great on top of rice.

If you'd rather make a soup, which is delicious with rice noodles, you can add more broth (or broth paste + water). That's what I did this time, and poured the mix over cooked rice noodles in the bottom of my single-serving bowl. If you plan on having leftovers, I wouldn't recommend adding the noodles directly to the soup. They tend to get soggy.

After adding more broth: it's soup! My favorite broth paste is Better than Bouillon (link above) and the best one for Asian cooking is the vegetarian chicken broth, called "No-Chicken." Caution vegetarians: they also have a real chicken variety!

The final product was yummy, rich, and full of tasty eggplant tidbits. The only downside: it's really not good cold, so expect to microwave your leftovers.





*Credit for this broth paste combo (Better than Bouillon Fake-Chicken + Thai Kitchen green curry) goes to the venerable and amazing Aunt Barb.