More Eggplant Denverings

In my last entry, I mentioned the amazing cooking of my Aunt Susan. I'm fortunate to have many inspiring home cooks in my family: my mother and her two sisters are all incredibly skilled and creative in the kitchen, and yet each sister has her own distinctive cooking style. I think if you served me three dishes, one from each sister, I could tell them apart -- and it wouldn't be possible for me to choose a favorite. Many years ago my cousin suggested that we collect recipes into a "three sisters" cookbook, and I still think it's a great idea... if any of us had the time or resources to actually create such a thing.

Whenever I visit Denver, my hometown, I'm always eager to cook with my Aunt Barb, who makes amazing dishes that span every cuisine across the world. Most of the time I'm afraid to cook East Asian (of any kind: Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese... you name it). I seem to have an East Asian curse, in which everything I make turns out horrible nomatter what recipe I use, nomatter how authentic the ingredients are, nomatter how much advice I get from my more experienced Aunt-chefs. Last night, for example, I made a hot-and-sour noodle soup slightly thickened with tapioca starch... except the soup tastes terrible and the starch refused to dissolve, resulting in little blobs of jelly swimming around in there like aspic bubbles or those tiny creatures that wash up on the beach. Gross.

When I visited Denver this past Thanksgiving, my Aunt Barb served a far more successful -- and totally beautiful -- Asian meal, which did in fact include eggplants.

An amazingly colorful meal: scallion pancakes, spring rolls, ginger-lime-leaf cabbage slaw, and tons of different dipping sauces. 

The eggplants were cut into strips, roasted, and rolled up inside spring rolls. The rolls also contained wedges of avocado, smoked tofu, and asparagus.

And everything was truly as delicious as it looks.

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This completes my trio of Christmas entries, none of which I should be writing right now. 

Procrastination complete. 

3, 2, 1... initiate proposal-writing.