Oppa Sorghum Style

Wait, what? The "gangnam style" song is no longer a hip viral video? It's as outdated as next year's doge? Well shucks. <--- note: also a pun that could apply to sorghum

Even if my internet pop culture is slightly out of date, the good news is that sorghum is timeless. It's a grain that was first domesticated in Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia and, after its dispersal along the silk trade routes, became one of the most widely cultivated grains of India. It's a sort of power-grain that survives all kinds of drought and remains super nutritious...

...and delicious! And fortunately not hard to come by, as it's sold widely in health food stores and gentrified bulk bins. A few days ago I decided to make a spiced sorghum topping for these adorable baby eggplants:

Too cute to pass up.

My idea for this dish was quite similar to the bulgur-topped eggplants from a while back -- but this time I had a tastier array of ingredients to work with rather than random things from my pantry.

Baby eggplants topped with sorghum and leeks

Ingredients
4-6 baby eggplants, tops removed and halved lengthwise
ca. 1 cup sorghum (boiled in salted water for 1 hr and drained)
3 leeks
olive oil
salt and pepper
spices: tomato powder, smoked paprika, green chile powder
chopped cilantro or parsley


First: cut the wee eggpwants in half, salt them if you wish (re: salting, see the entry I am about to write... just after this one), coat them in olive oil and roast them in the oven at 350 degrees.

After about 30 minutes in the oven.

While the eggplants are baking and sorghum is boiling, you can prepare the leeks. I learned how to wash and cut leeks from David Lebovitz, who does a vastly better job of explaining the process than I can. If you cook the leeks on low heat with olive oil for a long time, they eventually "melt" (or so it's called in French, not that I speak French). Typically melted leeks are made with butter, but I always cook with olive oil and I find they taste lovely all the same.

When the leeks are melted down (ca. 20 minutes), add the spices to the oil:

Boiling sorghum and melting leeks. This photo was taken just after I put the spices in.

And once the sorghum is ready, dump that into your leeks and oil mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Leeks and sorghum mixture. 

By this point, the eggplants should be finished and you can begin topping them:

Just pile that stuff right on top.

Sprinkle with chopped herbs and serve.

This particular meal was made with my fave vegan co-chef, Marcy! She made a delicious massaged kale salad with pine nuts and avocado, and we also made yellow squash salad with ginger, lemongrass, and cilantro. Recipes for those are listed below.

Co-chef Marcy's kale specialty.

Sorghum goodness up close.

The full meal: 100% vegan, healthy, full of proteiny grains, and super tasty.

Massaged kale salad

Ingredients
as much kale as desired
lemon juice
nutritional yeast
olive oil
pine nuts
chopped avocado
salt/pepper to taste

Kale is a tough vegetable, often served steamed or sautéed. But Marcy introduced me to a way of preparing kale that is catching on among kaleophiles. (I think that word is apt, since kale does seem to be the most popular vegetable around. But curiously enough, I learned that a lot of folks in Europe consider it to be virtually like animal feed, just like our buddy sorghum. Apparently the Dutch word for kale translates as "rabbit cabbage"! But hey, if it's good enough for the rabbits...)

So anyway, if you spend some time massaging it with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt, the combination of acid and crumpling breaks down some of the kale fibers and tenderizes it, almost the way acid "cooks" the ingredients in a ceviche. (I'm not a huge advocate of the raw diet personally, but if you don't need to cook it, why bother? Especially in the blazing Chicago summer.)

After you've massaged the kale to your heart's content, add nutritional yeast, pine nuts, avocado, and any additional salt/pepper the salad needs. Super simple, tasty, and leftovers keep surprisingly well in the fridge.


Yellow squash with ginger

Ingredients
as many yellow squashes as you want
lots of olive oil
fresh ginger, chopped
Cambodian lemongrass curry powder (or anything else similar -- Thai green curry paste, ground lemongrass, etc.)
salt and pepper to taste
chopped cilantro

Slice and sautée yellow squash in olive oil, turning each piece so that both sides are nice and brown. After piling the finished squash pieces in a bowl and seasoning with salt and pepper, add a tiny bit of extra olive oil to the pan and fry the fresh ginger along with the spices (just long enough to season the oil, but don't let the spices burn!). Drizzle the spiced ginger-oil and chunks of ginger over the squash. Top with chopped cilantro. This dish is oily, but it's olive oil and therefore delicious. The leftover oil-squash-juice can be drizzled on top of other salads. Or just rub it into your skin for an instant squash facial! (erm... maybe not.)