Homegrown patio babies

Last post I was thrilled about my bumper crop of patio baby eggplants. This post, I must sadly report that my eggplant (and cherry tomato) were eaten up by spider mites. It turns out there are a lot of bugs in Hawai'i and gardening is harder than I thought. But on the bright side, I got one last harvest before my plant threw in the towel.

The tiniest patio baby. I have named him Bip.

To showcase the eggplants' dimensions, I made:

Roasted eggplant salad with grape tomatoes and buttermilk sauce

This recipe is adapted from Ottolenghi's famous eggplant with buttermilk sauce, but sans pomegranate and with tomatoes instead. I personally like the contrast of cooked and raw—without the pomegranate kernels in Ottolenghi's recipe, raw tomatoes substitute some of that tang—but if you wanted, you could roast the tomatoes whole in the oven along with the eggplants.

Ingredients

Tiny baby eggplants
Grape tomatoes
Smoked salt
Buttermilk
Greek yogurt
Olive oil
Half a garlic clove
Black pepper
Fresh herbs (pictured: parsley and basil)

Method

Cut off the eggplant tops. Coat in olive oil and smoked salt and bake at 385° F for 15-20 minutes until soft.

Also pictured: eggplant slices I was using for something else. Can there ever be enough aubergines? 

While baking, make the buttermilk sauce: whisk together equal parts buttermilk and greek yogurt, a dash of olive oil, crushed garlic, pepper, and salt to taste. Arrange the eggplants and tomatoes on a dish, pour sauce over the top, and garnish with herbs. Tastes great with a piece of bread to soak up the extra sauce.

And with that: farewell, tiny baby patio eggplants. It has been lovely knowing you.

Gardening and Gochujang

Seasoned readers will recall my frustrations as I tried to grow eggplants on my fire escape in Chicago last year. The project was so unsuccessful that it was virtually unbloggable; it was salvaged by making a huge deal of transporting two lame eggplants on an airplane and then frying them to find they tasted awful. All other attempts at growing failed and the terra cotta graveyard was quickly forgotten under a layer of ice.

Admire the above photograph. This is what patio eggplants look like in a climate that never drops below 70°. Fertilized by eggshells, plant food, and rainbows.

The view from my living room this morning.

The variety I'm growing is called "patio baby" and it sprouts dozens upon dozens of eggs. They are supposed to be harvested at only 2-3 inches long, perhaps even earlier, as they begin to grow bitter once their skins lose shine. They're tiny and bite-sized and adorbs.

The first harvest, picked slightly too late (with less gloss to their skins), plus a long green sweet pepper that I grew.

Picked these fellas this morning. Only slightly awkward.

With my first harvest I decided to make

Gochujang-glazed eggplants with tempeh

which can be eaten over rice or salad, takes only a few minutes, and tastes delicious. That's because gochujang—a Korean condiment made from spicy peppers and fermented soybeans—has such depth and umami. Speaking of mami, my mother sent me a jar of the best dang gochujang I've ever had. It looks bourgey, it comes from Brooklyn, and it may or may not be manufactured by a Korean mother-in-law, but I just don't care. The stuff tastes fresher and more vibrant than any of the tubs I bought at the Korean grocery.

Two different approaches to gochujang: this expensive stuff from Brooklyn that reminds me how white I am vs. the cheap stuff from the Korean grocery (below) that has a duller flavor. There may be a good one at some Korean groceries too but this one didn't have much selection.

Without further ado:

Gochujang-glazed baby eggplants and tempeh

Ingredients
As many baby eggplants as you've grown, halved
Gochujang of choice
Tempeh, sliced
Dash of soy sauce
Sesame oil
Olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
Optional: chopped scallion, sesame seeds for the top

Method
Fry baby eggplants in a mixture of sesame oil and olive oil (or just sesame if you like a strong flavor).

Add tempeh strips and fry with lid on for a few minutes. Turn the items over when they're brown and add a dash of soy sauce; cover with a lid to steam the things. Add more oil if the tempeh has soaked it up, and add the garlic. Then mix some water into the gochujang, shake it up, and pour over the top, returning the lid to steam for a minute or two.

Optional: at this stage add a dash of barbecue sauce just for extra deliciousness. Cook down for a few minutes until the sauce becomes bubbly and sticky, turning over the pieces as necessary.

Still simmering down.

A minute later: sticky-glazed.

Serve on top of rice, salad greens, or slaw. Top with green onions and sesame seeds. Continue growing baby eggplants 4ever.

As for how the home-grown eggplants tasted: they're a tiny bit bitter, since I picked them after they lost their gloss (at the massive size of 3 inches), but they're mostly sweet with a strong plant-y flavor, like chlorophyll, that I like. If you pick them when they're really tiny, I can imagine roasting them whole with interesting spices rubbed onto their skins, or breading and frying like tempura. Might try that next, stay tuned.

Lunch lurks.

A bounty!

UPDATE
11/23, Thanksgiving Day
I am thankful for the bounty of eggplants... but unfortunately they are mostly dead now after having been eaten by spider mites. There are a lot of bugs here. RIP, eggplants, it's been real.

Poor Man's Eggplant with Garlic Sauce

Sometimes you want to make a satisfying bowl of eggplant in 15 minutes. When that mood strikes, you can make a simplified version of eggplant with garlic sauce. It's chunky, rustic, uncouth, no lovely sauce thickened with tapioca starch, no slivered veggies, no chopsticks, no zodiac placemat. Just a bowl of eggplant that gets the job done.

Ingredients 
2-3 chinese eggplants, cut in half and diagonal chunks
3-4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced (or coarsely chopped, if you love ginger like I do)
~3 tsp sesame oil
~3 Tbsp olive oil or another vegetable oil
soy sauce (3-4 seconds' worth when poured from a small Kikkoman bottle)
rice vinegar (1 second worth)
brown sugar (two good pinches)
1 small squirt of barbecue sauce (not authentic, but who cares)
optional: chili flakes

Method
Set your timer for 15 minutes.

Heat oils and add eggplant to the pan on medium heat. Fry both sides of eggplant until they show some color. The pieces might not be cooked through yet.

Add garlic and ginger. Add a little more oil if eggplants have soaked everything up. Turn heat down and fry with lid for 2 minutes. Add a dash of water and cook with lid for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add all the sauce ingredients and sauté, first with lid, until eggplant is soft. Then remove the lid and cook off excess liquid until sauce bubbles slightly with sugars. Taste the sauce and adjust if needed, adding more soy sauce, vinegar, or sugar. If it's too salty, more vinegar and sugar will cut the salt.

Pile on top of rice that you've had in your freezer for two weeks and microwaved.

*ding* 15 minutes is up. Enjoy!

Trials and Tribulations with the Instant Pot

Remember how in my last post, which I just posted, so there's no way you'd remember—how I said I'm being 100% honest on this blog?

I was really excited about my dinner tonight and I messed it up. I'm still learning how to use my Instant Pot. It's a useful contraption that triples as a rice cooker, pressure cooker, and slow cooker. It offers total control and flexibility and precision... once you learn how to use it.

I'm still a novice. I turned a pile of beautiful fresh ingredients into this:

How romantic.

I wanted to create a spicy, gingery coconut curry with locally grown ingredients. Out here on the island, that means okinawan sweet potatoes which are purple inside (yaaaas spud), malabar spinach which I discovered is ungodly slimy, young ginger which is so tender you can cut it with a spoon, kaffir lime leaves that infuse everything with a wonderful perfume, and locally grown eggplants of course.

I wanted to make sure everything would be cooked to perfection (ahem) so I thought I'd do three rounds of quick pressure cook: one longer round for the potatoes and chana dal (which is a toothsome lentil that takes a while to cook), followed by a short cook on the eggplants and one last round for the spinach. My mistake was that okinawan potatoes cook faster than I thought, so these dissolved into mushy gooey pulp. The lentils were overdone too. It's a gloppy mess, BUT:

It tastes fabulous!

So glop. So yum.

Ergo: I'm posting the recipe anyway. Take these ingredients as inspiration and do with them what you please. Cook them as long as you like, in whatever order you like.

Ingredients
eggplants
5 shallots, peeled and halved
1 large jalapeño, seeded and chopped
tons of chopped ginger
a few cloves of chopped garlic
chana dal
spinach
sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 can of coconut milk
coconut oil
turmeric
tikka masala spice blend, or any spices you like (Thai curry would work better, actually, and then omit the lentils)
kaffir lime leaves (2 is enough)
salt to taste

Method not to do

Fry up ginger, peppers, lime leaves, and shallots in oil.

Add spices and lentils.

Add water and half the can of coconut milk. Seal up your cooker and go.

Meanwhile, prep the spinach and eggplant. Add that in at some point and overcook until it looks like...

...this. Salt to taste.

I would be embarrassed about this final product except it tastes so good. I leave it to you, dear reader, to rectify my mistakes and make this a perfect dish.

Baingan Bharta: For Real This Time

I've already posted about baingan bharta, a delectable Punjabi eggplant mush. But if I seemed satisfied with my past renditions, I was lying. When I established this blog back in 2011 (oh wow), it was more affected and less truthful. I went for a tone of wise authority when I was actually still figuring my mushes out.

The truth is: last week was the first time my baingan bharta tasted just right.

I had a bunch of people over to consecrate my Honolulan dining table. In addition to eggplant, I made: rasam soup; berbere lentils; potatoes and okra with fresh turmeric and mustard seeds and fried onions; raita; date chutney; and coconut cardamom rice pudding.

Since the food and company were so pleasant, I ended up forgetting to take pictures of the spread until we'd already eaten. By then, this was all that remained of the baingan bharta:

So here's what I did.

Ingredients (with dodgy quantities as usual)
2 large eggplants
fresh tomatoes OR can of crushed tomatoes
lots of garlic
tons of fresh ginger
1 large onion
2 mild jalapeños or 1 spicy green pepper of another sort
generous layer of coconut oil
turmeric (fresh or ground)
garam masala
whole cumin seeds
a handful or two of frozen green peas
smoked salt

Method
Roast the eggplants on a gas flame and put in the oven on 350 degrees until falling apart. Or if you have an electric stove, as do I, stick them in the oven and bake them to death.

After the eggplants are falling apart, remove the skins and large seed lobes and chopmash.

Make a paste. This is the main difference from my previous method and it works wonders. Grind up half the onion, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and jalapeños in a food processor or blender. In a large pan, heat up the oil and chop the other half of the onion. Fry the onion and pop whole cumin seeds in the oil, then add the turmeric and garam masala, and finally add the paste. Fry, stirring frequently, on medium heat until it becomes red and oily and yummy. Once you've reached a stage of oily richness, add the eggplant (pictured below). Pour in some water if it's looking too dry.

Don't skimp on the oil. Unless you want to. Then you can.

Stir it all up and sauté for a minute or two. It'll look like this.

Add the green peas and cook lightly until they're tender but still green. Turn off the heat, add salt to taste, preferably smoked salt. (Don't skimp on the salt either. Come on, salt is delicious!) Smother with fresh cilantro and sprinkle on some sliced fresh green chilies for added heat.

Devour alongside newfound friends.

Hi from HI, and also: eggplant with tangy chickpeas

Welp. I live in Honolulu now. So that happened. 

Google maps is under the impression that I'm here.

A place I was several hours ago.

This same place, farther up the ridge, where I saw the entire island end to end and clouds landed on my head.

So now that I live here you can expect a lot of 1) Asian eggplant piles from restaurants and 2) Mediterranean eggplant piles from my kitchen as I page hungrily through Ottolenghi.

Also, I have a new kitchen! NOW: with brighter lights!

Aubergenius's new hub.

I couldn't resist buying these adorbsable finger-sized eggplants at the Japanese grocery:

Just recently I discovered a strange velvety ball-on-legs. It emits the oddest sounds.

I wanted to channel my inner Ottolenghi but had no energy left to shop at the store, so I improvised something out of my cabinets instead. It was delicious in every way except that it needed some fresh herbs on top. I suggest a handful of parsley and mint ground up in the yogurt sauce and chopped on top. My creation layers:

-roasted eggplants
-rice (because half the food on this island is rice)
-flavorblasted chickpea wowbombs
-yogurt sauce

Flavorpacked tastytreat chickpea eggplant layer thing with tangy yums

Ingredients
cute little eggplants, halved
1 can chickpeas
brown rice [ideally long-grain or wild rice, which works better than the sticky short-grain pictured here]
greek yogurt
3-4 cloves garlic
whole cumin seeds
smoked paprika
smoked sea salt (if you have it)
crushed aleppo chile powder
black pepper
olive oil
juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
mint, parsley

Method
Get started cooking your rice according to your favorite method.

Halve the eggplants, coat with plenty of olive oil, and roast on a baking sheet at 380 degrees for 15-20 minutes until soft. Sprinkle with smoked salt and pepper, then roast face-down to get a nice color on the top.

While eggplants are baking, make the chickpeas. Slice garlic and sauté on medium-low heat with olive oil and cumin seed until golden.

Watch closely, don't let it burn. Also, this immediately makes your kitchen smell awesome.

Drain and rinse chickpeas. Add these to the pan together with a pinch of aleppo chiles, smoked paprika, black pepper, and a pinch of smoky salt. Add two generous squeezes of lemon juice, plus some grated lemon zest. Fry briefly until chickpeas are coated with spices and oily/dry on the outside. They should burst with flavor, and if not, add a little more salt and lemon.

Meanwhile...

This beautiful sight.

Whisk greek yogurt with water, lemon juice, a dash of salt, black pepper, and fresh herbs if you have them. (Here I used dried mint, not nearly as good.) The sauce should be drizzling consistency. Arrange your roasted eggplants on a platter, layer with rice and a generous serving of chickpeas, and drizzle with sauce.

The H.M.S. Aubergine docks at Craigslistjug Harbor.

The Condiment is King

So what's the best thing to do when you've just returned from London, jetlagged and droopy, and you're procrastinating having to pack everything you own in 4 days?

Cook up some eggplant! Need I even ask.

As the Condiment Queen (not a nickname I chose for myself, but I'll endorse it), I've become increasingly fond of Korean food. I'm a loyal customer/consumer at Ajoomah's Apron in Chicago, where (as usual) half the meal is comprised of bottomless bowls of pickles, sprouts, kimchi and seaweed salad. They also make great noodles and bowls of soup big enough for three people [to bathe in?]. But I can't help ordering bibimbap most of the time. It's a comfort food.

My fellow eggplantophile Zoë (below) and I nerd out over
the condiments before the food even arrives.

Shout out to Zoë for introducing me to bibimbap several years ago. 

I was impressed by my mom's own intrepid forays into Korean cooking when she tried bibimbap for the first time last week and one day later whipped up her own version.

Bold experimenter in the kitchen, cooking muse, blog's most loyal reader.
HAI MOM

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago I made my first kimchi. Which makes me more bourgey than intrepid, but still, I was bubbling with pride like a bubbling jar of probiotic cabbage. Roughly 4 days at room temp, with twice daily burpings (gross, but seriously, burp the jars or they explode). In addition to the usual cabbage and chili, I used daikon, scallions, ginger, and garlic—and with all those flavors in there, it turned out delicious and it gets better each week as it matures in the fridge.

That said, I made it way too spicy. That red color is no joke.

With six jars of the stuff, I'm looking for excuses to eat it. Today I made gaji-namul, an eggplant side dish, along with lots of things-in-little-bowls to complement the condiment.

Eggplant side dish with kimchi, pickled radish, carrot, and cucumber, lightly dressed tofu cubes, steamed spinach with sesame oil, and rice.

I won't reproduce the recipe here, since I used a couple recipes that already exist online: this one and also this one. It tastes delicious, but I'm not sure why my eggplant skins lost their lovely purple color, whereas the recipe photos retain their hue. This was admittedly my first time steaming eggplant. I found it tricky to steam all chunks equally; some were super-soft while others were a bit rubbery, even though I rotated them once during steaming. Probably tried to fit too much into a tiny pot.

But regardless, even the rubbery pieces taste great, and lend a bit of texture. As for the other stuff on the table: I lightly pickled some veggies in rice vinegar, salt and sugar. I dressed steamed spinach in salt and sesame oil. Likewise, I made a light dressing for the tofu. The brand I like to use is from a local Chicago company called Phoenix Bean. It's the best tofu I've ever found, with a creamy flavor and dense texture, best served after being soaked for a day in salt water.

Health and stuff.

The more bowls the better.

Grumpy bowl was sad when the meal was over. (If we've learned anything from Disney, it's that the truest measure of yumminess is the critical response from the cutlery.)