NUKE THAT VEG

Can you microwave eggplant?

Somehow I've never posed this question until now. It struck me as weirdly trashy. I assumed that without being roasted in oil or charred on the gas stove or fried, eggplant would taste bland and terrible. (And I guess despite owning a microwave, I have a bit of analog snobbery built in.)

But if you think about it, roasting a whole eggplant in the oven is not that different from microwaving. The roasty flavor doesn't usually reach the inside flesh, which gets just plain mushy.

So when a friend offered to demonstrate the so-called "nuke the bejeezus out of an eggplant" method, I figured I should let go of my aubergine snobbery and give it a try. As long as you sauté the microwaved eggplant in tasty oily stuff, it turns out great -- and most importantly, my Moroccan Zaalouk only took 20 minutes.

Delicious warm...

...or cold!

Nuke Zaalouk
Ingredients
1 large eggplant
1 onion, diced
1 red and 1 green pepper, diced
a few fresh tomatoes, diced
a spoonful of tomato paste
3 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
salt, pepper, cumin, paprika
parsley or cilantro

Slice eggplant in half and microwave for around 4-5 minutes on each side (total of 8-10 minutes).

Fry up onions, peppers, and spices in olive oil. Add garlic, tomatoes and tomato paste to the mix.

Remove skin and mash up the eggplant flesh.

Sauté together with the other ingredients and salt to taste. This photo doesn't look terribly appetizing (wokbarf?), but the final product is much more photogenic:

Yum! Eaten with dolmas, fried tempeh, tahini sauce, and pita. 

...and a pomegranate for dessert.

The next day it tastes even better!

Seiko's Eggplant

These days I post so rarely on this blog that every entry begins with a disclaimer.

Flight of the Conchords
"Hey man, I made you a pizza."

But not this time!

While I was in Berlin, I met a super cool lady who coincidentally lived just down the street from me. Seiko comes originally from Japan, though she's lived in Berlin for about 8 years. I was so grateful to have a friend around the corner -- when Berlin got cold and dark and miserable, we drank wine at the local tapas joint, cooked up a pot of Southwestern bean soup, ate greasy donuts at the Turkish bakery, and gossiped alternately about New Music and boys (despite neither of us having any boys in our lives about whom to gossip... somewhere out there Alison Bechdel just facepalmed). 

Seiko is a brilliant composer. Her latest projects have combined music with silent footage of instruments being played, or with provocative and ritualistic choreography, which creates the pantomimed shadow of a sound in the viewer's inner ear. It turns out that Seiko is also an awesome cook. When I mentioned my love of eggplants, she offered to show me her favorite Japanese eggplant recipe, which was SUPER yummy and easy to make: Eggplant and mushrooms with miso sauce.

But that's a bit of a mouthful, so to speak. I prefer to affectionately call it:

Seiko's eggplant

Ingredients: Sauce
2 tbsp miso paste
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin (cooking sake)
1 tbsp sake

Ingredients: Stuff
1 large or multiple smaller eggplants, chopped/sliced
Red peppers
Scallions
Ginger
Garlic
Mushrooms

Chop up the scallions, peppers, and ginger and mix up the sauce. 

Slice eggplants into thin wedges.

Fry ginger and scallions in cooking oil. Add garlic.

While frying the aromatics, slice mushrooms.

Add the sauce, eggplant, and mushrooms and cook down with a lid.

Turning the heat down, of course, so nothing burns. Stir occasionally.

Not quite done, but getting there. If there's too much sauce, lift up the lid to allow evaporation.

Cooked down and almost caramelized.

The final result: totally delicious! Eat over rice, of course, and drink with horrible 3€ wine contributed by your houseguest (or... leave out that last part).

Eggplants of Europe, Unite!

In case you're wondering why this poor blog, as always, is vanishing into nothingness (not that anyone is really wondering that): I'm living in Europe this year! Nowadays I'm a kind of research-nomad, wandering through Germany and Austria with two giant suitcases.

But in the meantime, eggplants everywhere are experiencing profound neglect, accompanied by bouts of depression and seedlessness. 

Wait... is that... ?

... a triumphant aubergine? A valiant nightshade overcoming its ghastly fate? A glorious vegetable heaved high towards the heavens, like virtually everything ever written about Beethoven in the 19th century?

There are indeed eggplants to be found in Europe. However, my living situation is so changeable that I haven't been cooking them often enough to keep this poor blog alive. I've encountered a few interesting eggplants in restaurants: for example, Berlin is filled with Vietnamese restaurants that all seem to feature the same eggplant dish. It's some kind of eggplant and green banana in yellow curry sauce, which I've never seen in the US, but it's very common over here:

From a Vietnamese restaurant in Kreuzberg.

The same dish, looking virtually identical, at the vegetarian-Vietnamese restaurant Chat Viey.

Those grayish things are the green bananas with skins still attached.

The dish is pretty good, but not fantastic. It's not as heavenly-creamy as the eggplant at Kim Ba, and the sauce lacks a certain oomph, tasting mostly of turmeric. But the fact that it seems nearly ubiquitous in Vietnamese restaurants in Germany suggests that it's a popular favorite.

While I was back home visiting in Denver, my mother managed to re-create the famous Kim Ba eggplant. I was highly impressed, and perhaps I'll hit her up for the recipe in a future post.

This table ought to be familiar to blog readers by now... mainly because 60% of my readership regularly sits at it.

While I haven't had a lot of opportunity to cook, I did have one giant food-a-thon for my farewell-Berlin party last month, where I made a kickass rendition of mediterranean eggplant tomato salad. My latest approach had an excellent result (recipe below).

Eggplant salad:  probably the highlight of the absurd piles of food I made.

Tour de la table, from left to right: tabbouleh, moroccan carrot salad, eggplant salad, artichoke hearts, olives, yogurt sauce...

...spinach feta casserole, chickpea ginger salad, arugula-beet-apple-pine nut salad...

...and cheese!

Eggplant-Tomato Salad
Ingredients
As much eggplant as you want, sliced
Lots of olive oil
Lots of tomato paste
A couple fresh tomatoes, diced
A few sundried tomatoes, minced
Fresh garlic
Salt, pepper, broth powder/cubes
Pinch of sugar

Method
1) Coat the eggplants liberally with olive oil and bake on a tray in the oven, turning occasionally, until they are thoroughly softened, or even falling apart. (ca. 30 minutes)
2) When the eggplants are about 10 minutes away from mushy/roasty perfection, sautée garlic in olive oil until it turns golden (CAUTION: watch garlic the whole time! Do not allow it to burn!)
3) Add tomato paste and sundried tomatoes to the oil. Cook a few minutes, stirring, until color darkens.
4) Add fresh tomatoes and a small amount of water and broth flavoring, creating the consistency of a thick sauce. Simmer, stirring, until fresh tomatoes have broken down.
5) Add the already-roasted eggplant slices and season with additional salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar to taste.

Voilà!

The result is rich, oily, tomato-ey, mushy and yummy and wonderful -- wherever in the world you are.

Next week I'm headed to Turkey, where I hope to have a few actual eggplant adventures to spice up this poor, forgotten blog. Wish me luck!