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).