Cooking with Harissa

I feel like "Cooking with Harissa" should be the name of a Food Network show in which an elderly poof-haired lady with a boring drawl keeps doing things comically wrong.

Like, for example, putting a dollop of harissa in a sauté pan and accidentally breathing capsaicin into your lungs. Whoopsy daisy!

Hacking cough aside, I was so excited to find harissa now available at Trader Joe's. It's tasty stuff, too. In celebration, I roasted two giant eggplants and sauteed the mushy insides in olive oil with:

Onion
Garlic
Turmeric
Coriander
Paprika
Harissa

I added salt to taste, a generous squeeze of lemon juice, a dollop of tahini for creaminess, and cilantro. Voilà, another spicy relish, and super delish.

Great with bread, pita, crackers, etc. etc. the usual. 

This is actually just the eggplant version of a different dish I made recently. (I want to say I invented this recipe, but I'm sure someone else somewhere has thought of it.) I made a kind of spicy Mediterranean potato salad with boiled potatoes (the waxy kind that don't get mushy), diced cucumber and tomatoes, red onion, parsley, green olives, lemon juice, harissa, and tahini. And of course salt and pepper to taste, a swoop of olive oil, and sumac sprinkled on top. It was totally delicious.

Since life is crazy right now, I've developed a bit of a backlog: a few eggplant photos lying around, but little time to make these into entries that are even remotely enjoyable to read. So this post will function as ketchup (er... catch-up). I'm sacrificing wit, humor, whimsy, spark, gall, witz and glitz. In return, you get: another recipe idea.

BREAKING NEWS
My garden was a total fail this year. So bad. The eggplant is producing a few more little eggs, but everything is bitter and terrible and dying. The tomato plant has practically turned into a pillar of salt. The tomatillos are putting out zillions of flowers and turning into tiny hard tomatillo-nuggets that never get bigger, or ripen, and for some reason they all taste the way grasshoppers smell. The only plant that's doing well is my random bushy thing I got as a birthday present for a friend, who then gave it back to me when he almost killed it:

She's a thing of beauty.

My one miracle of life in the last month: a single pepper. I had the pleasure of watching it morph from a poblano to an ancho.

A while back I got two more bitter, sad eggplants on my balcony. I mixed them with storebought and made a delicious quasi-Japanesey stir fry with

Roasted eggplant pieces
Lacinato kale
Miso paste
Ginger, garlic, scallions
Rice vinegar
Sesame oil

Something is better than nothing.

The very best matchsticks.

Adding to the kale, then sauce on top, a little more stir-frying and done.

Yum. Delicious on rice. I also ate it on couscous... not terribly Japanese, but tasty anyway.

Auberginescapes.

That's all for now. Disappearing back into the job/dissertation gopher hole. Wish me luck!

Diary of a Young Eggplant, Part II: Seasoned Travelers

Back in May, I planted a somewhat ill-advised garden of vegetables on my fire escape. It's been an auberventure to keep them alive and happy.

Along the way, I've learned some tips about urban gardening that other porch-growers might find useful. But the main task of this entry is to lovingly chart the life-cycle of a single aubergine, from seed to greenhouse to plant store to garden fair to porch to blossom to fruit... i.e., the leafy Bildungsroman promised some entries ago.

I use the word "lovingly" for a reason. Growing vegetables brings out a weirdly maternal side. I find myself out on the fire escape caressing the plants a couple times a day. I'm not quite crooning lullabies at them, but almost. And aware that it's a bit weird.

There's just a certain dorky magic when they start blossoming before your eyes. Almost overnight, my eggplant was decked in big purple flowers. 

with amazing alien spikes on their backsides.

Just like that, I walked out and found two baby eggplants looking... like eggs. They went from flowers to fruit in only a day. For seasoned gardeners, this comes as no surprise -- but for people like me, taking a stab at gardening on a crowded urban porch, the startling pace of nature instills a real sense of wonder. Like my first time witnessing a caterpillar wiggling itself into a chrysalis. 

In their cutest babiest form, these eggplants reminded me of my childhood pet dwarf hamsters: a little head and a little butt with nothing in-between.

Only a couple days later, they looked like real vegetables. They grew almost an inch per day.

I would have let them mature to their adult size (whatever that may be), but I was about to hop on a plane for a week-long vacation...

... so I decided they needed to see the world.

But not before seeking wisdom from an ancient guru.

Plants on a Plane.

Just as I was about to leave for my trip, I noticed that all the purple flowers had fallen off right at the moment when they were supposed to form fruit. Same went for the pepper plant. Turns out this is called blossom drop and it happens whenever plants are stressed -- which can stem from (ha) a huge variety of factors. Too hot, too cold, too moist, too dry, chemical exposure, killer hamsters, not enough sun... the list goes on.

I solved the mystery by talking to some experienced gardeners. Alas, the fertilizer I was using -- coffee grounds -- just wasn't enough for a tiny pot. It takes food to grow food. So I bought a container of nasty fish fertilizer, which is the color and consistency of bird poop with a stench of rotting fish guts. Yum. The smell only amplifies in the summer heat... but the plants love it. Their blossoms are going strong and I'm looking forward to new generations of little fingers soon.

Meanwhile, on vacation, the moment of truth.

Complete with: way too much olive oil. Oops.

This is a sacred moment for an eggplant nerd. In German, the word for "inaugurate" is einweihen, which contains the word weihen meaning "hallow" or "consecrate." 

It turned out to be more of an Einwehung. (Weh = oy vay!) 

As in... a bitter disappointment. 

But on the bright side, maybe my next generation of home-grown eggplants will taste like... tuna?

Eggplant-Tomato Salad... the infinitely more link-able edition

I make reference to my favorite eggplant tomato salad all the time. But the recipe for it is buried in a long rambly post from a year ago.

So I'm re-posting the recipe by itself (see, I can take criticism). Now it can be easily linked, generously shared, and widely nommed.

By itself it looks like this:

On a table full of homemade foods in Berlin a year ago it looks like this:

Up close and personal it looks like this:

And here's how you make it:

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)  Salt eggplant slices if you wish, coat liberally with olive oil, and bake on a tray in the oven, flipping once, until they are falling apart and roasted and delicious. (ca. 20-30 minutes)
2) When the eggplants are about 10 minutes away from roasty perfection, sautée garlic in olive oil until it turns golden (caution: watch garlic the whole time! Don't 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.

Chowbus: bringing you food in an unmarked van since 2015

A couple weeks ago I encountered a friend standing forlornly in the rain. His explanation: "spicy scallops."

It turns out there's an app called Chowbus, operating only in the Chicago area (sorry, everyone else), that delivers authentic meals from Chinatown to a variety of pick-up spots including The Regenstein Library a.k.a. my second home. My friend gestured to the curbside, saying "see that white car there? Where all the students are lined up?" And this makes sense, because for a while now, I've noticed folks on campus tucking into amazing-looking Chinese food. I assumed there was some mystery food truck somewhere. But no. This is the 21st century, after all.

The way it works: menu rotates daily, with a different area restaurant and 10-12 dishes to choose from. You enter your credit card info into the app. Order any time before 11am that day (as early as afternoon/evening before) and it'll charge your credit card. There's a $1 fee for delivery, and note that the service only operates Monday-Friday, so Friday orders will arrive on Monday.

I couldn't resist trying the app when a daily menu included my favorite eggplant from Ed's Potsticker House in Bridgeport.

As you can see, though: it's a bit pricey for lunch. I was hoping there would be a lot of food for $11. 

The lunch has arrived. Please tell me that's my name in Chinese characters.

Inside: not only eggplant, but also mixed green veggies in a light sauce and scallion pancakes.

Tastes just as I remembered. Yum.

My overall assessment:

Pros: Food was delicious, quantity was fairly large, and I appreciated the variety, with greens and pancakes tossed in just for fun. A nice treat.

Cons: Appealing vegetarian options are few and far between. I waited two weeks before a tasty vegetarian menu item appeared. (Most of the veggie food: mixed vegetables, Buddha's delight, etc.) If you're a meat-eater, you'll probably have a ball. But the biggest con: it's quite expensive. Few students can afford $11 every day for lunch. On rare occasion, treat yo self, but for the most part this app will lie dormant on my phone.

It was worth a shot just to feel like an insider for a day!

Update 7/18: I gave the Chowbus one more shot today, with an order of (you guessed it) eggplant in garlic sauce from Lao Sze Chuan. Even though it was listed with a giant green "veggie" and ingredients were posted for allergy concerns, the surprise side-dish was only vegetarian by loose Chinatown standards: cabbage with little baby shrimps. Which meant I couldn't eat 1/3 of the meal. A big disappointment to all you vegetarian eggplant fanatics trying out a random food delivery app that operates only in Chicago. You know who you are.

Salad on eggplant on lentils

GUILTY.

...without further ado, here's my latest recipe!

There's an entire sub-species of foodstacks that start with legumes layered with eggplant topped with salad. You can experiment with your favorite components and layer away. In the meantime, here's one I just concocted. Tasty, healthy, refreshing, yada yada. It can be eaten while eggplants and lentils are still warm, or just thrown together cold.

Lentil eggplant salad with tahini dressing

Ingredients: lentils and eggplant

Puy lentils, black lentils, or any small variety that holds its shape when cooked

Veggie broth (I use Better Than Bouillon paste)

Whatever root veggies you have lying around (I dumped in a bunch of carrots)

1 large eggplant, sliced

Olive oil

Salt, pepper

Ingredients: salad

1 Belgian endive, thinly sliced

Assorted cute tomatoes, halved

Sicilian green olives, sliced (or sub for your favorite olives)

Salad greens, shredded (I used one of those "power greens" mixes)
Crumbled feta cheese

Fresh mint, chopped

Fresh parsley, chopped

Ingredients: tahini dressing

Two spoonfuls of tahini

Juice of half a lemon, or slightly less, depending on your desired tanginess
Dash of olive oil
Dash of water
Salt, pepper to taste
(Optional: crushed garlic. Personally, raw garlic angers my tummy, but go ahead!)

Method

Boil lentils in broth with root vegetables. When cooked through, drain and remove veggies. Roast eggplants in slices, coated liberally in olive oil (and salted beforehand if you wish). Toss together salad ingredients with tahini dressing. Layer and nom.

Lentil layer with guard cat

Add some twisty slices.

Assemble the salad in a bowl.

and done!

Tricolore salad (from Ottolenghi with love)

Food outdoors. It's so rustic and charming.

A while back I received a very generous gift of two Ottolenghi cookbooks, Plenty and, in case that weren't enough, Plenty More. It's basically food porn thinly disguised as recipes.

Dammit, Yotam, real foods can never look like your foods.

Plenty, in particular, has an entire section of eggplants, and the sequel has (you guessed it) plenty more. But unfortunately I haven't used these books extensively because almost every recipe contains random weird ingredients that I can't find anywhere. 

Raise your hand if your pantry contains:

• scamorza affumicata
• barberries
• preserved lemons
• pandan leaves
• kaffir lime leaves
• curry leaves
• tamarind paste (phew, I have that)
• pomegranate molasses (phew, I have that)
• za'atar (phew, I have that)
• nigella seeds (ugh, I don't have those)
• membrillo (seriously, now? just stop)

Granted, I know roughly where I might buy these things, but special stores are all 20 miles away. So while I love drooling over the cookbooks, the recipes themselves are not always easy to pull together. Even a simple salad leaves a big carbon footprint when you have to commute for the pandan leaves.

And when I omit the special ingredients, the recipes end up tasting similar to my usual cooking. Probably because I'm substituting boring pantry fare for all the magical combinations that make Ottolenghi's recipes innovative.

That's why I was excited to discover the eggplant tricolore salad, complete with normal ingredients!

I think reproducing the recipe here might constitute some kind of copyright violation. Suffice it to say that roasted eggplants are topped with [REDACTED] tomatoes, peppers, capers, marinated in a light [REDACTED], topped with buffalo [REDACTED] and fresh [REDACTED].

RE-the-effin-DACTED

Color me hungry.

Update 7/18: 

BREAKING NEWS

I made three more Ottolenghi recipes from these cookbooks and they all turned out great. So maybe take my complaints about weird ingredients with a grain of salt. (An expression that also evokes the over-specificity of his instructions... but really, I'm a fan. I'm finally convinced.)

More food outdoors! 2 of 3 new recipes I made.

You oughta lenghi.

Roasted eggplant slices with herbaceous pesto

I'm always frustrated when fresh herbs go bad. So many groceries sell cilantro or parsley in bunches that are big enough to double as switches in a Russian banya.

So naturally I've been experimenting with techniques for using up fresh herbs. My most recent success is a hybrid of chimichurri sauce and pesto, with four different kinds of herbs. It's refreshing, vegan, and "zesty" (I use that word sparingly and with quotation-mark kid-gloves to avoid becoming a food blog cliché).

The pesto is great on virtually everything: tomatoes, rice noodles, tortillas, baked potatoes, avocados, salad, sandwiches... am I forgetting something?

OH YEEEEAH you can also put it on eggplant.

I made this particular batch with a large quantity of Thai basil. I've been growing it in my herb planter and trying desperately to keep the basil from bolting, to no avail. (For those n00bs without a green thumb in sight: when basil bolts, it grows tall and flowers and its leaves become bitter. Usually you can prune it into obedience, but I guess I'm a lenient basil master. [Er... right.])

Stop growing, dammit!

So I finally made the hard decision to strip my Thai basil down, pull up all but a single plant, and make room for my little tiny basil babies that I germinated from seed.

D'awwwwww.

Grow free, tiny basils, grow free!

Thai basil has a great flavor, like a cross between genovese basil, tarragon, and a hint of anise (with that same sweet black-licorice aftertaste). I wouldn't mind someday growing a ton of it in my imaginary future garden and making a pesto out of Thai basil alone.

Herbaceous Pesto
with zesto

Ingredients
Tons of cilantro
Tons of parsley
Thai basil (or regular basil)
Mint
Fresh ginger
Large handful of cashews (or cashew butter)
Lime juice
Dash of red wine vinegar (if it needs extra zest)
Salt
Water (just enough to grind smoothly in the food processor)

Method
Process food.

It's a jungle in there.

Serving suggestion
Dump on roasted eggplant slices, because this is an eggplant blog.

It is genuinely truly very delicious.