Lycopene Stew

This week I am up to the neck in obligations... but somehow I couldn't resist making a giant pot of eggplant mush.

As usual with eggplant mush: tastes delicious, looks strangely nasty.

This eggplant salad is inspired by the so-called "house eggplant" at Falafel King, a Mediterranean chain in Denver and Boulder. I frequented Falafel King in middle school and I recall that the pita sandwiches -- which always broke at the bottom and bled copious amounts of tomato sauce and tahini dressing -- reminded me of eggplant sloppy joes.

The key to this salad is a long cooking time, allowing the tomato paste to become richer in flavor. Note that I made a double recipe so that I'll have plenty left over -- the massive quantity you see in the photos is completely unnecessary.

Ingredients
1 medium/large eggplant
1 large or 2 small onions
1 red bell pepper or 2 slender sweet peppers
1/2 jalapeño
3 cloves garlic (no joke)
1 1/2 small cans tomato paste
salt, pepper, cumin, coriander
1 pinch sugar
lots of olive oil

Cut the onions and peppers into thin slivers. Saute in olive oil until somewhat softened.  Meanwhile, cut eggplant into slivers.

Ancient sweet peppers are kind of cool-looking.

These large chunks of jalapeños are somewhat ballsy -- you can dice them if you wish.

You can't tell from this picture, but this eggplant is 14" long. I've nicknamed it "Dolly."

Fries! Or... not.

Add tomato paste, crushed garlic, and a generous swoop of olive oil to the onions. Saute the tomato paste until it darkens, stirring frequently to avoid burning, ca. 10 minutes.

Mmm.  <--- brilliant caption

Add eggplant slivers and coat with tomato mixture. Add about 2 cups water and cover.

Cook on medium until eggplants gradually reduce down and soften. Stir relatively frequently and add water as necessary. The sauce should have the approximate consistency of marinara. When the eggplants are so soft that you can cut through them with a fork, the salad is done.

About 10 minutes in.

About 30 minutes in. Note that it will take less time if you avoid using giant genetically-modified eggplants.

Turn off heat. Season with salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar, and desired spices -- I suggest cumin and coriander, but you can experiment as you wish. Chopped fresh parsley couldn't hurt, either.

Serving suggestions: eat inside falafel sandwiches (of course), on rice or couscous, on bread as an appetizer, or straight out of the bowl. It's lycopene-lickin' good.

Eggplants in Seattle, Episode 2: Russian Eggplant Caviar

Last week we were invited for dinner at my uncle’s girlfriend’s stylish downtown loft. Marina is from Russia, hence the dinner was a blur of delicious Russian dishes.

Including a picture-perfect plum tart and piroshki [that contained no eggplant and will be featured regardless because they were so yummy].

Marina also made an eggplant dish that she called “eggplant caviar.” It consists of eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and parsley, chopped up and simmered into a caponata-like salad. The flavor was similar to imam bayildi, but with less tomato-ness.

Here’s how to make it:

Cube the eggplants and chop the onions, carrots, tomatoes, etc.

Garlic choppin'.

After sauteeing the eggplants in oil, with salt added, toss in the onions.

Then add the carrots and garlic a little while later.

The author demonstrates proper stirring technique.

After the eggplant-onion-carrots mixture has cooked down, add the tomatoes.

A little while later, add chopped parsley.

Simmer the mixture with a closed pot until it looks like this. Then season with more salt and black pepper, to taste.

The result. Like most Russian dishes, it is simple yet delicious. (I say "yet" because I'm accustomed to putting a million spices in my food. But it's not always necessary -- a well-salted dish is often just as tasty.)

Eggplant Caponata

As I may have mentioned, virtually every time I’m in the grocery, I buy an eggplant. And probably a good 30% of those eggplants are subsequently converted into caponata, one of my favorite side salads/bread toppings. Like most Italian dishes, caponata has an array of styles and variations ranging from a coarse, oily chop to a smoother, silkier paste. My personal favorite is a strong, rich, tomatoey caponata with a deep red color that is sure to stain your clothes. White-wearers beware.

One nice thing about caponata is its versatility. It’s delicious on virtually any kind of bread, tasty by itself or alongside a mild cheese (especially goat cheese, one of my favorite flavor duos ever), and it goes well with most Italian, Mediterranean, and even Middle-Eastern flavors.

This time, I forgot to buy parsley (pardon its absence in the photos) but I attained an even richer flavor than usual by using a dollop of roasted garlic paste I made earlier in the week: I coated whole garlic bulbs in olive oil, roasted them on low heat for ages, then mashed the softened cloves with salt and pepper.

Ingredients
Makes enough for many meals

1 large onion, diced

Several celery stalks, diced

1 medium/large eggplant, cubed

1 red bell pepper, diced (optional)

1 6-oz can of tomato paste

4-5 ripe tomatoes -- or, in winter, a large 28-oz can of diced tomatoes with juice

2-3 cloves crushed garlic

About 3/4 c green pitted olives, whole or sliced

About 1/4 c capers

About 1/8 c balsamic vinegar
About 1/4 c olive juice

A dash of caper juice

About 1 1/2 tsp sugar

About 1 tsp salt

Black pepper to taste

A handful of minced flatleaf parsley

Lots of olive oil

The “about” in my instructions starts to get redundant after a while – just keep in mind that, as I articulated in an earlier entry, I do all my cooking by taste and I advocate intuitive use of quantities. Start out with the approximate quantities I’ve listed here, then adjust seasonings to balance the sweetness (sugar), tartness (vinegar), and saltiness (either olive juice or, of course, salt).

Start out by sautéing* the onions in olive oil for a few minutes, then adding tomato paste, stirring frequently to avoid burning. Continue to sauté until the tomato paste turns a darker shade.

One of the most fragrant beginnings I know.

 

Add the diced celery and bell pepper (if using) and stir. After cooking for a couple minutes, add the cubed eggplant, coat with the tomato paste, and add another hefty swoop of olive oil, making sure the mixture is moist enough for the eggplants to soften.

The grand addition of our star vegetable.

Add the chopped tomatoes along with the garlic. Allow the tomatoes to break down and the eggplant to soften, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes.

Add the olives, capers, olive and caper juice, and the balsamic vinegar. Simmer for a while longer until the mixture becomes deep red and the eggplant is fully cooked.

I've just eaten this stuff for the last three meals and the photo still makes me hungry.

Turn off heat. Season with sugar, salt and pepper to taste (using caution with the salt – there’s quite a bit of salt already in the olive juice). Continue to balance seasonings using salt, vinegar and sugar until the caponata has a bold flavor (but try not to overpower the natural tomato-ey-ness). Stir in fresh parsley.

This recipe – along with most anything that involves cooked tomatoes – tastes best the next day. It's fine either warm or cold from the fridge, but I like it best at room temperature with warm bread.

*Now that I’m studying French (mais oui!) this word seems a little silly, with the accent aigu and the anglicized "ing"... maybe it should be a fully anglicized "sawtaying"? 

Fab Four, Episode 1: Indian eggplants with date chutney

(See previous entry, “Fab Four,” for the premise of the next four entries.)

 My first recipe will feature the wee little Indian eggplant. These eggplants have a naturally sweet, fresh taste and they cook quickly to the ideal state of mushiness. This improvised recipe worked well, the only shortcoming being that it was rather oily. Try coating the pan with a thin layer of oil, rather than frying in steeper oil as I did... in the meantime, I’ll continue to experiment with ways of making these eggplants less greasy. The flavors, however, were delicious. ("Were," past-tense, because I ate them all.)

I should mention that the onion date chutney is inspired by a near-identical dish served at Marigold, a Chicago modern Indian eatery. Mine is tastier, however, due to the addition of more salt and several hefty squeezes of lime.

The final result.

Recipe #1.  Fried Indian Eggplants with Raita and Onion Date Chutney

Appetizer, serves 2 – be sure to double or triple the recipe unless cooking for self or romantic candlelight dinner

Ingredients

4 Indian eggplants

1/4-1/8 c chickpea flour (can substitute wheat flour if desired)

pinch of salt

turmeric, paprika, cumin, coriander

1/2 c plain yogurt

Some carrot

Some cucumber

ca. 15 pitted dates

1 vidalia onion

crushed red pepper

1 lime

olive oil

peanut, corn or canola oil for frying

Eggplants

Remove the leafy flaps from 4 Indian eggplants, leaving the stems attached. Trim stems down to a stub.

Combine chickpea flour with salt, turmeric, paprika, and cumin. 

Moisten the surface of each eggplant and dip face-down into flour. Pour a nice-sized pool of frying oil in pan and heat on medium-high. Fry eggplants face-down in oil until browned, then turn and cook other side; the eggplants should cook very quickly. Remove from oil and place on paper towel to soak excess grease.

Raita

Mix yogurt with shredded or chopped carrot and cucumber, coriander, and salt to taste.

Onion Date Chutney, the highlight of this dish in my opinion

Note: this recipe makes a LOT of chutney, enough to feed a whole family of chutney gnomes.Try halving or even quartering the recipe if you don’t anticipate spreading chutney on your toast for the next two weeks.

Coarsely chop vidalia onion and sauté in olive oil until caramel-brown. 

Add ca. 15 dates, 1/2 cup water, a good dash of crushed red pepper flakes and paprika. 

Simmer on low-medium for about 10 minutes, adding water to avoid burning. Add salt to taste.

 Place stewed mixture in food processor and squeeze in the juice of 1 lime. Purée until smooth.

The resultant combination is great as an appetizer, or could be coupled with a bowl of rasam soup, roti and some salad for an Indian lunch. 

Rasam, eggplant and red pepper relish, yogurt, lime pickle, cucumber
and greens salad -- all possible companions to fried eggplants with chutney and raita. 

Professor Emarinate

As I’m still in the process of rendering eggplant botany fascinating, resulting in a delay in my entry on eggplant anatomy, I’d like to tide you over with an easy and absurdly delicious way to prepare eggplant.

Before I begin, here’s something you should know about my cooking style. I don’t like precise measurements. Unless of course I'm baking, in which I’ve learned that improvisation leads to disaster.  Like the time I tried to invent a type of muffin that contained all the necessary nutrients for survival, and also ran out of eggs. Baking failures aside, I like to cook by eye and by taste. Too often I follow a recipe exactly, only to discover that whoever wrote it was on several drugs. Therefore, in the recipes that follow, I will give you approximations, photographs (this entry excepted), and eloquent descriptions – but in the end, it’s up to you to determine how much to add because you’re cooking for your own taste buds. 

Marinated Roasted Eggplant with Yumminess

Note: in case of allergy to yumminess, substitute for ickiness

Step 1:

Cut the eggplant into round slices approximately 1/2 inch thick. Coat slices generously in olive oil and roast in oven on 350° F, flipping over about 10-15 minutes into cooking time. Take out the slices when they’re dark golden brown on both sides and soft all the way through.

Note: if you want to roast some other vegetables too, like quartered onions, red pepper, asparagus, leeks, scallions, etc., go right ahead. Most everything tastes good with a strong marinade.

Step 2:

Mix together:

4 or more Tbsp balsamic vinegar; for a lighter marinade, mix 3 Tbsp vinegar with 1 Tbsp water

A smallish pile of brown or dijon mustard

One clove of crushed garlic

Slightly less than 1 tsp brown sugar or honey

Crushed dried or fresh rosemary (and/or basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, chives... etc.)

Salt and pepper to taste

Step 3:

Put eggplant rounds into a container. Mix with marinade. Sprinkle liberally with yumminess.  OH WAIT, you don’t have to, because it’s already yummy.

Step 4:

Let sit for at least a few hours. Serving suggestion: eat with crackers or bread, chevre, ajvar (red pepper spread, either homemade or storebought), and slices of cucumber.

The best thing about marinated eggplant (and vegetables generally) is that it can be added to so many things. Grind it up with olives to make eggplant tapenade. Mash it into a paste to put on crackers. Top it with raita and eat on grilled toast. Add slices to a sandwich. Sprinkle on your salad. Make a hell-of nasty smoothie to take to the gym. Or just eat it with chopsticks straight from tupperware, like I do. 


Addendum: When you use straight vinegar in a marinade like this without adding oil, it can be rather strong, as if you were eating olives or pickles. If you'd prefer a milder eggplant, be very generous with the baking oil and pour any excess oil into the marinade after baking; as stated above, you may also wish to water down your vinegar slightly and add a tiny bit of extra sugar to balance the tartness.