Spicy Eggplant Zucchini Relish

It's zucchini season! I think? Is that why they're so cheap in the grocery these days?

This evening I splurged on some fancy bread from my favorite neighborhood bakery (big fan of the bakery; not the restaurant) and decided to experiment with a spicy condiment. My thought was a hybrid of ratatouille, zaalouk, and eggplant caviar, with some smoky chipotle for umami and just enough spicy kick to warrant a dollop of yogurt on top. Because there must always, always be a dollop of yogurt on top.

It only just occurs to me that I've never posted ratatouille on this blog. I made an amazing rendition some months ago from one of Ottolenghi's cookbooks -- an unusual version that gets pan-roasted and caramelized -- but I never photographed it. Some part of me fears that, since no real life ratatouille can surpass this, the standards are unbearably high.

Spicy Eggplant Zucchini Relish
for your delectation

Ingredients
1/2 vidalia onion, chopped
3 zucchini, cubed
1 large eggplant, cubed
2 cloves garlic, crushed
spoonful of broth
olive oil
coriander, paprika, cumin (just a tiny dash)
1/4 to 1/2 of a chipotle pepper (from the can)
lemon or lime juice to taste
salt, pepper to taste
minced cilantro on top
(optional: a dash of honey)

Note: I think turmeric would be good in here, but I'm fresh out. In retrospect, too, I might add a scoop of tahini.

One of my special-est birthday presents: a handmade ceramic bowl.
It pays to have artsy friends.

Method
Chop up the chopped stuff. Sauté onion in olive oil until golden. Add spices, more oil, eggplant, zucchini, and garlic. Cook down, stirring frequently. Add chipotle, broth, and honey if you like sweet & spicy. Cover and simmer until cooked way down. Stir often enough that relish does not burn. Cook until eggplant and zucchini pieces are falling apart into a nearly indiscernible mush; at a certain point, remove the lid and cook off some of the liquid. Remove from heat. Add more salt and pepper to taste, fresh lime/lemon juice, and top with cilantro. Serve with your favorite carbs.

The way so many eggplant adventures begin.

Cilantro a little droopy; feels left out?

Eggplants and spices and oil and zucchinis, just before the cooking begins.

Simmered about 7 minutes. Still a bit raw.

... simmer down now. (ca. 15 minutes)

...and mush. Around 20-30 minutes of mushifying. But the longer you cook it, the better it tastes. Keep it going.

Recommended complements:
feta
goat cheese
seeded crackers
individually wrapped hanks of injera from your freezer (what, you don't have those?)
tapenade
a cheap, crappy wine with a beautiful label that you thought would taste good*

A little bread cave.

*The wine, not the label. Smart alecks of the world, I'm one step ahead of you.

Diary of a Young Eggplant

Lately I've been a lazy eggplantophile. Every eggplant I buy gets automatically converted into roasted slices and only rarely elevated to an eggplant-tomato salad (at best). The creativity stops there. My latest slices were piled onto a flatbread -- and this was no homemade triumph of floury aprons, but just a blob of Trader Joe's pizza dough:

Pictured here with chipotle lentils and feta.

Tasty... but not especially inventive.

Sheer laziness aside, my cooking nonchalance marks an important turning point in my eggplant life. My priorities have shifted from consumption to production. My fire escape has now become a nursery for new generations of nightshades.

Poblano, tomatillo, san marzano, and... 

"Little Fingers." Because I teach piano. Isn't that precious.

My urban garden got off to a rough start. This year's spring in Chicago has been so miserably cold that the plants almost died their first night outdoors. I had to keep them inside, where they starved for sun and warmed themselves over the heat of my obsessive birthday-picnic cooking-extravaganza. (I made about 10 things. One of them was... tomato eggplant salad. My repertoire needs a boost.)

Our young hero: lacking sun, hoisted high away from the window to escape the cruel jaws of a noshy cat.

I couldn't help imagining some kind of Pixar movie where the outdoor plants and the indoor plants are forced into uncomfortable conversation. Very Finding Nemo. So the pothos is like, "hey Johnny, we've got company!" and the money plant is like "what are y'all doing on our block?" and the tomato is like "yeah dude, we're new on the block" and the tomatillo just blushes and curls a finger around its tendrils.

"It's ok, little guy. Just be patient. They'll come round."

Meanwhile, shit's going down at the windowsill.

"Psst. Who's that scary goth dude?"
"Shut up shut up! He's looking at us!"

As our young eggplant hero matures, I'll chart his growth in a kind of leafy Bildungsroman. Hopefully by the end of the summer, I'll have some little fingers to roast into tiny little slices and make a tiny little eggplant salad for a tiny hedgehog.

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).

Eggplants of Europe, Unite!

In case you're wondering why this poor blog, as always, is vanishing into nothingness (not that anyone is really wondering that): I'm living in Europe this year! Nowadays I'm a kind of research-nomad, wandering through Germany and Austria with two giant suitcases.

But in the meantime, eggplants everywhere are experiencing profound neglect, accompanied by bouts of depression and seedlessness. 

Wait... is that... ?

... a triumphant aubergine? A valiant nightshade overcoming its ghastly fate? A glorious vegetable heaved high towards the heavens, like virtually everything ever written about Beethoven in the 19th century?

There are indeed eggplants to be found in Europe. However, my living situation is so changeable that I haven't been cooking them often enough to keep this poor blog alive. I've encountered a few interesting eggplants in restaurants: for example, Berlin is filled with Vietnamese restaurants that all seem to feature the same eggplant dish. It's some kind of eggplant and green banana in yellow curry sauce, which I've never seen in the US, but it's very common over here:

From a Vietnamese restaurant in Kreuzberg.

The same dish, looking virtually identical, at the vegetarian-Vietnamese restaurant Chat Viey.

Those grayish things are the green bananas with skins still attached.

The dish is pretty good, but not fantastic. It's not as heavenly-creamy as the eggplant at Kim Ba, and the sauce lacks a certain oomph, tasting mostly of turmeric. But the fact that it seems nearly ubiquitous in Vietnamese restaurants in Germany suggests that it's a popular favorite.

While I was back home visiting in Denver, my mother managed to re-create the famous Kim Ba eggplant. I was highly impressed, and perhaps I'll hit her up for the recipe in a future post.

This table ought to be familiar to blog readers by now... mainly because 60% of my readership regularly sits at it.

While I haven't had a lot of opportunity to cook, I did have one giant food-a-thon for my farewell-Berlin party last month, where I made a kickass rendition of mediterranean eggplant tomato salad. My latest approach had an excellent result (recipe below).

Eggplant salad:  probably the highlight of the absurd piles of food I made.

Tour de la table, from left to right: tabbouleh, moroccan carrot salad, eggplant salad, artichoke hearts, olives, yogurt sauce...

...spinach feta casserole, chickpea ginger salad, arugula-beet-apple-pine nut salad...

...and cheese!

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) Coat the eggplants liberally with olive oil and bake on a tray in the oven, turning occasionally, until they are thoroughly softened, or even falling apart. (ca. 30 minutes)
2) When the eggplants are about 10 minutes away from mushy/roasty perfection, sautée garlic in olive oil until it turns golden (CAUTION: watch garlic the whole time! Do not 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.

Voilà!

The result is rich, oily, tomato-ey, mushy and yummy and wonderful -- wherever in the world you are.

Next week I'm headed to Turkey, where I hope to have a few actual eggplant adventures to spice up this poor, forgotten blog. Wish me luck!

Sticky Eggplant at the Potsticker House

Some time ago, my friend Marcy (previously featured as the maker of massaged kale salad) reported that a restaurant in Bridgeport makes an amazing eggplant dish. A couple weeks ago, we finally made an Aubergenius excursion to the Potsticker House. The place is just awesome. I give it 4.5 out of 5 eggplants.

Our excursion caught in a strange and awkward moment with someone else coming through the door who apologized for getting in the shot and nobody ready for the camera. 

The eggplant in question was the usual menu item -- eggplant in garlic sauce -- only this version was different from the usual. In many restaurants, eggplant in garlic sauce involves segments of Chinese eggplant friend in oil until deliciously mushy, then served in a dark garlicky sauce with some sprigs of green stuff. This version, in contrast, consisted of battered-and-fried eggplant strips (similar to the House Eggplant at Tony Hu's Lao Beijing) coated in a sticky-sweet-salty-spicy sauce. The addition of peppers and fresh woodsear mushrooms also set this version apart. The mushrooms themselves don't have much flavor, but they have a wonderful rubbery/crunchy texture and soak up sauce like a sponge. 

The eggplant: oh so delicious.

Other things we ordered: ma po tofu (in the corner), a pile of miscellaneous green stuff, dumplings.

There were other eggplant items on the menu that I'm hoping I'll have an opportunity to try sometime in the future. Anyone for a repeat Bridgeport excursion?

Or we could just get 4 orders of this. I wouldn't mind.

Seattle, Satay... I feel like there's a pun waiting to happen but it's just not working

I recently learned that there is a competition called the Punderdome, and that someone I vaguely know just WON. As the Aubergenius, I'm naturally looking out for a Portmantournament (groan) or better yet, a Choonerism Spampionship (ouch). In the meantime, I keep feeling like Seattle and Satay are similar enough words that something good should come of this... but Seattay and Sattaytle are strangely unsatisfying.

It's an eggplant Sattaytle!

During my recent trip to the Seattle area, I went to one of my family's favorite restaurants, the Tamarind Tree. Their menu is massive and there are a number of veggie options, most of which are unusual things I've never seen at Vietnamese restaurants before -- like coconut cake topped with miscellaneous grilled things, crepe filled with other miscellaneous things, strange dumplings filled with somethingorother (OK clearly I can't remember this menu exactly), and a variety of satay appetizers.

A noodle bowl topped with marinated and grilled tofu, fried thingies, fresh thingies and also some stuff.

Dumplings filled with stuff, topped with fried onions and tofu and other fried things that seem like a root of some kind but actually I don't know what it was but it tasted good.

Pho.

 Overall, my impression of the restaurant (not that you asked): nice decor, albeit somewhat dark (black ceiling can feel a bit cave-like), gorgeous bathrooms, hip plateware and presentation, food looks and smells delectable, full of different textures... but regrettably, all the vegetarian options come with the exact same sugary-sweet soy sauce dressing, which results in everything tasting very much the same. Perhaps a couple more veggie sauces on the menu (whatever happened to peanut sauce?) might have improved the experience.

But overall, a SATASTY meal. Guffaw.

This post is relevant to the topic of my blog!