Tuesday, October 10, 2017

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!




Wednesday, October 4, 2017

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.