to: gansie
from: Gee
subject: Bangin Eggplant Recipe

message:

This is long over due, courtesy of my broseph.

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This recipe is for indian style eggplant.  The hindi word for eggplant is baingan and this style is burtha.

Ingredients:
1 Large Eggplant (or two small eggplants)

2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
5 cloves garlic
1 inch of ginger
1 red chili (optional)
2 red onion

1 teaspoon of tumeric
4 tomatoes finely chopped

1/2 cup of (frozen) peas
1/2 lime
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 pinch of guram massala
2 teaspoons salt (optional)

Directions:

Lightly coat the eggplant(s) in olive oil.  And broil for 30 to 35 minutes.

While the eggplant is broiling away, you can start on the rest.  Heat olive oil in a deep frying pan(wok?).  Once oil is warm add cumin seeds.  Toast seeds for 5 minutes, careful not too burn.   Add in garlic, ginger, onions, chili.  Cook and stir well for 5 minutes.   Add tomatoes and tumeric. Lower heat to medium, cover and cook for 20 minutes.  Add peas, lime juice, cilantro, salt and guram masala poured anti-clockwise.  Lower heat to low. Stir and cook for 5 more minutes.

Remove eggplant from oven after 30 minutes.  With a knife, slice the eggplant in half length wise.  The skin will be paper crisp and cut like butta.  Take a spoon and scoop the interior of the eggplant out.  It will easily separate from the skin.  Scoop into a bowl.  Pour and mix the tomato base from pan into the same bowl.  Evenly mix. And Serve.

I served my Banging Eggplant with 1 cup of organic brown basmati rice, yogurt, Trader Joes garlic naan and Anejas Mano Wine.

More or less, its a traditional family/ethinic recipe, that he put together from experience. the name and way of cooking the eggplant (broil – bang) he did make up.

And now I’m posting this.

I don’t care that it’s 50 degrees out and windy and rainy and my body is begging my wallet to buy a winter squash for a warming soup.

No.

I refuse.

If there are still tomatoes and eggplants and zucchinis at the farmers market, then I’m holding out for summer’s brightly colored bounty to keep me happy in the kitchen. And because of this ridiculous self-induced rule, I also over-buy, which is easy when 6 long and slender eggplants only cost $2.

What to do with that many eggplants?

I flirted with the idea of baba ganoush. But I just don’t love. To me, baba g plays the role of the just-slightly uglier step-sister. I really want baba g to succeed, it’s born from the same gene pool as its beautiful sister, hummus: garlic, tahini, lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. Baba g isn’t as creamy, as smooth, as clean. The chickpea triumphs over the eggplant in this contest of dips.

Therefore, I ditched the baba g.

Eggplant, Feta and Sage Dip-Sauce

I charred and roasted the eggplants as David Lebovitz told me to, but I changed up the ingredients. Once the eggplants were out of the oven, I used a grapefruit spoon to split them open and scoop out the flesh. In a food processor I whizzed around: eggplant innards, feta, fresh sage leaves, 3 garlic cloves, lemon juice (1/2 lemon), salt and pepper.

I had absolutely no idea what I’d really do with all of this “dip,” as I called it that day. Oh, and did I mention that I just made this in the middle of the day on Saturday just because (well, to be honest, I was procrastinating from finishing the interview.)

I piled the eggplant mixture into tupperware and left it in the fridge for a few days.

Then there was the issue of dinner. It was 50 degrees out and windy and rainy and I was cursing myself for not buying that squash to make a thick orange-hued soup. But I remembered my eggplant.

Boiled water, threw in fettuccine. Warmed up the eggplant dip with finely chopped mizuna and added two ladel-fuls of the pasta cooking water to make it more saucy. Tossed it together and topped it with more feta and freshly ground black pepper.  (PS – I used the tag “healthy” because there was no oil in the eggplant sauce.)

I hate sharing. I hate bartering. I hate compromising.

I want goat cheese, spinach, olives and sun-dried tomatoes on my pizza. I do not care that you hate olives. I do not want to split a plate of anchovies and roasted red peppers. Anchovies make me convulse. I want all of my garlic shrimp. You order your own.  I think you know where I’m going with this.

When did these “small plates” become so fucking popular. I don’t want a bite of this or a bite of that. I want an entire fucking steak and I want to eat it all myself. Screw tapas and mezze or any other dish where you have to invoke cloture to place an order. Enough of this sharing shit.

But then there’s Ethiopian.

And for some reason—maybe it’s because all of the dishes seem fairly similar to our uncultured eyes—is the only restaurant scene where I don’t mind going with a bunch of people and sharing a large spread of saucy meats and legumes and veggies over injera.

I recently found injera at a mostly convenience, but one aisle of Ethiopian goods, store. Injera is a spongy, thin, bread-like utensil. It’s a utensil because at Ethiopian restaurants diners use the bread to scoop up bites of food; there are no forks or knives or spoons. It’s wickedly fun.

For those unfortunate enough not to have eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant, it kinda goes like this: large sheet of injera on a circular plate, clumps of lamb, beef, lentils, collards, tomatoes and an assortment of other items are placed on the injera, with each clump in its own little area; extra injera is placed on the side and when the extra injera runs out, grab the sauced up injera that has been sitting underneath the clumps to gather any of the leftover food, or eat the moistened injera on its own.  And to be clear (Matt), injera, in no way, tastes like t-shirts.

Injera is delicious and I cant wait to put it under a fried egg.

But for last night’s dinner, I refrained from the obligatory egg and thought up a few other clumps.

Injera with Inauthentic Clumps
Serves 2*

Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic
And in the shocker of the post, I actually followed an (anal) recipe.

Slow Cooked Onions and Peppers
Because moistening the injera is key, I wanted an onion dish that could pass for spreadable. Over super low heat I cooked down an onion for almost an hour. I added a bell pepper for the last 25 minutes. Of course there was oil, salt and pepper.

Broiled Eggplant
I cut an eggplant into disks, tossed it with oil, salt and pepper and broiled it for about 7 minutes.

Mashed Cannelloni with Fresh Oregano and Garlic
I dumped a can of cannelloni beans into hot oil, let the beans soften and slightly brown, added in garlic until just softened and then roughly mashed everything together with a touch more oil, salt, pepper and oregano. But only slightly mashed, making sure to keep some beans whole.

Arugula-Cream Cheese Sauce
If I haven’t mentioned it enough, injera loves sauce and because my clumps weren’t particularly saucy, I decided to whiz up a quick sauce. In the food processor: one clove garlic, a handful of arugula, half of a spicy chili (forget the name, but it was quite large and could be confused for a long, narrow red bell pepper), 2-3 spoonfuls cream cheese, salt, pepper, 2-3 dashes white wine vinegar and a swirl of oil. Blend until creamy, should be fairly thick.

Plating:
I spread the sauce directly on the injera, creating a small circle in the middle, but leaving the outsides dry. Kinda like spreading pizza sauce. Then I added the clumps over the sauce, lined the space between the clumps with torn arugula and drizzled more sauce on top.

Eat with your injera-ed hands!

*With the leftover beans, eggplant, potatoes and onion mixture, I, of course, threw it into a cast iron, mixed an egg with the leftover cream cheese sauce, poured the egg over top and on the stove top made a quick fritatta for tomorrow’s lunch.

The enlarged clover-like leaves, the purple tinged stems, the blaring Omega 3 endorsement. Purslane, a green I’ve yet to hear of, grabbed the five dollars right out of my worn wallet.

When I mentioned to some foodie friends that I bought this mysterious-to-me green, they dismissed it. It was too stemy. It was nothing special. I’m here to promote purslane, and not just because its name reminds me of my favorite accessory.

Purslane #1
I quickly cooked the chopped up green in butter, added in halved sungold tomatoes (My very favorite variety this year; as my friend Jeb noted: they’re so sweet it reminds you why a tomato is actually a fruit), shoved them to the side of the pan—added more butter!—and scrambled two farm fresh eggs. When the eggs were almost cooked, I stirred everything together and hit it with salt and pepper.

Purslane #2
I’m not really a fan of regular couscous, but I love the more doughy Israeli couscous. I broke down a tomato with oil and garlic, added in the couscous, covered with water and let it simmer for a few minutes. While that was cooking, I broiled disks of eggplant, tossed with oil, salt and pepper. Everything was thrown together, with chopped purslane over top, barely wilting from the heat of its companions.

Purslane #3, #4, #5
Tossed in with cold peanut-soy noodles; emerged in an Indian-esque ginger stew with tomatoes and eggplant; buzzed around with fresh oregeno for a pesto-ish spread…

One of the palates I attempt to cater to is that of Romeo, my bf.  Romeo is a rather demanding discerning eater. He doesn’t like it when I add diced garlic to a dish.  Romeo prefers garlic minced with the pampered chef garlic press that lives in our kitchen (which, to be honest, is hands-down the best garlic press I have ever used, lemme tell you). I comply with this demand suggestion. Romeo prefers his meals more gently spiced than I like mine. (To be fair some like it hot, and some like it hotter still, and I represent a dot somewhere near the hot-hot-hot end of the bland-to-razzle dazzle spicy continuum. This I admit.) I’ve tried to tone down the hotness for Romeo’s wimpy sensitive taste buds, and with occasional exceptions, I usually succeed in a palatable compromise for the both of us.

There is one thing that Romeo had asked for since I first took on the position of his chef-in-chief (or “kitchen dictator” as Romeo insists on calling me) that for a while absolutely bewildered me:  “flying saucer squashes.”

The conversation we had on several occasions always went something like this:

Maids: Do you want anything from the store?

Romeo (smiling and excited): Yes. Bring me the flying-saucer-squashes so we can use them in a curry.  They taste like bursts of sunshine.

Maids (genuinely curious):  What do you mean?

Romeo (short temper spent, yelling now): Buy those little yellow flying saucer squashes at the grocery store so we can put them in curry and they’ll taste like sunshine!

Maids: I don’t know what you mean by flying saucer squashes! Are they thin skinned or thick skinned? Summer or winter?

Romeo (frustrated and stamping both feet): They’re summer squashes that look like baby flying saucers and taste like sunshine! God!

I know he’s adorable, but that wasn’t much to go on, right?  Especially since  I’d never before encountered flying saucer-like  squashes.  I knew, however, that I needed to address Romeo’s unrequited craving for a summer squash that looked like a flying saucer and tasted like sunshine.

Recently, after over a year and a half of being unable to fulfill this request, I had a follow-up investigatory conversation with with Edouble and Miked (who have been feeding Romeo for far longer than I).  Edouble filled me in:  these squashes, for which both Edouble and Romeo have a special affinity, are commonly known as sunburst squashes.  They are small and round with scalloped tops and they are usually available only in the summer season.

More research yielded further knowledge: the pattypan squash (A.K.A. white squash/button squash/sunburst squash) comes in yellow, white, and green colors, is most tender when immature, and is often served  fried, curried, and stuffed.  It sounded delicious, and I was on a mission to make a curry with the pattypan as the M.V.I. (Most Valuable Ingredient thanx ES commenter “LC”) of the dish.

My successful search for the pattypans and the recipe for the Pattypan Vegetable Thai Curry after the jump…

My efforts to find the pattypan squashes were frustrated at both the neighborhood Giant and Safeway, and the farmers’ market wasn’t selling squashes yet.  One day on my walk home from work I decided to venture into the Harris Teeter that’s housed in the bowels of Adams Morgan here in DC.  I searched through the fresh vegetable section where the broccoli and squashes, eggplant and cabbage lay glistening with the chilling spray of intermittent mechanized water showers.

No luck: I only found those all-too-familiar summer squashes and zucchinis, and a few tumorous yellow crooknecks glaring back at me from under the drape of lettuce leaves.  Hmmm.  I had almost given up when I walked past the packaged fresh veggie section, and … miraculously there they were!  Eight green and yellow  pattypans, each with a circumference at the widest part that was just a bit larger than a quarter, sealed in a small clear plastic bag.  I was momentarily torn between annoyance at the amount of packaging in which the pattypans were available (definitely not local/carbon neutral pattypans!) and the need to soothe my longing to work with the delightful little morsels.  The longing won out.  I bought five bags of them (about 40 pattypans in all) and decided to have an impromptu pattypan curry party.

Pattypan Vegetable Thai Curry

In my favorite deep frying pan I sautéed 7 minced cloves of garlic.  After the garlic browned slightly, I added a can and a half of “lite” coconut milk and brought it to a boil.  When the coconut milk became fragrant I turned the heat down to simmer and added in two bay leaves stirred and simmered for ten minutes.  I added toasted and crushed coriander seeds, cumin, ginger and garam masala, and two-thirds of a jar of thai green curry paste, salt, basil and a handful of shredded coconut. I also added water as needed as the sauce reduced a bit and I didn’t want to add more coconut milk.

I took 32 of the baby pattypan squashes and stared at them in some consternation.  I wasn’t sure whether they would pick up the flavor of the curry satisfactorily if I left them whole.  So I decided to take my chances with the yellow ones and leave them whole, while I cut the green ones in half. I fished out the bay leaves and added the pattypans to the fragrant brew.

I diced 4 baby yellow potatoes and threw those in the pot as well. I let those ingredients cook on simmer for about 20 minutes while I chopped and prepared the rest of the ingredients.  I took several bunches of broccolini, chopped off the stems and added the broccolini stems and julienned eggplant into the curry and cooked the curry for another 15 minutes.  I then added a few dashes of red pepper flakes, a tablespoon of sugar-free syrup (you can use sugary syrup or honey), and a dash of soy sauce.  By this time, the pattypans were nice and tender as were the potatoes.  For the last five minutes I added in the heads of broccolini, turned the heat up and covered the pan.  When the broccolini turned a bright, inviting green, I added a few handfuls of  cilantro and gave a stir or two more for good measure!

I served the curry over brown rice with thai chili and garlic dipping sauce on the side for the more adventurous diners.  Romeo reported that, while he liked both the sliced and the whole pattypans, he preferred the whole pattypans. The whole pattypans tasted as they were born to taste – like little bursts of sunshine.

Pic of Patty Pans in Hands: Clinton Hill CSA

One of my favorite scenes in Sleepless in Seattle is right after Tom Hanks (Sam) and son (Jonah) drop off Hanks’ new-ish girlfriend at the airport. Jonah is, idonknow, 8, and his mom just died and he of course isn’t all that into the girlfriend.

After the drop off, Sam tries to explain dating to Jonah. Sam wonders why girlfriend twirls her hair, wonders why she laughs in a certain way, wonders why she…well, whatever weird girl things she does. And Sam tells Jonah that he’s willing to get to the bottom of it. Understand her. She’s like a glove and he’s trying to see if they fit. If they’d make a pair. Or something like that. You know, just go watch the movie.

Well, I feel this way about egg foo young. I’ve always been curious about the dish, you know, there being egg in the title and all. But I’ve never ordered it. So when 80P and I ordered-in Chinese the other night, I went for it: vegetable egg foo young.  (We ordered from Great Wall Szechuan House, a top pick from the WaPo food critic. And holy crap – best Chinese ever. The eggplant with garlic sauce. Wow. Silky, soft purple nuggets. Do it.)

I pretty much hated the egg foo young. Greasy. Just greasy. And I love grease. But it appeared as a mangled mess of batter and grease and batter-stained broccoli and weird fried parts and slabs of omelet-style eggs and diced carrots. And I really just don’t know what else. Accompanying this concoction – gravy. What? Yes, totally not anything special brown gravy.

But you know what. I’m intrigued. I’m willing to investigate. I will follow this egg fascination around the globe. I will get to the bottom of egg foo young.

A few months back, DAD GANSIE was impressed by a traditional baba ghanoush I brought home.  Ignoring the seasonality of the ingredients, I told him I would make it for him again while I was home over the holidays.  But with so many temptations all over the house, I couldn’t simply stick with eggplant, oil, garlic, lemon and tahini.  Oh, no.  I had to add and add and add.  Dips bring out the worst in me.  And most of the time, they work out wonderfully.  But sometimes, they take hours and days of work.  This one was one of them.

I roasted two Chinese eggplants, slit them in half, rubbed oil on the cut side and then placed that side down.  I also used a fork to Peirce the skin a few times – 375 for about 30 minutes.  In my parent’s second oven, I roasted one red pepper then stuffed it in tupperware to let it steam to help get the skin off.  While that was happening, I prepared the other ingredients.  The ingredient that brought down the integrity of the dip.

Yea, so never add a whole RAW red onion to a dip.  Never.  It will sting your entire body.  The dip will suck and then you will take the next hour figuring out how to get that flavor out.  And it will suck.

Once I scraped out the eggplant insides, I whizzed that in a food processor with the red pepper, the diced RAW red onion, tahini sauce, non fat half and half, crema mexicana, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper, lemon juice and zest and olive oil.  Then added in cream cheese to try to dilute the sting.

It still smacked of red onion, so with some insight from this recipe, I let the mixture sit over some heat for about 30 minutes, trying to get the onion flavor to cook out.  And well, it kinda worked.  But I still wasn’t happy.  So I threw it in tupperware and let it sit in my fridge for a few days.  Punishment, if you will.

I took it out, mixed it around with some more salt and lemon juice and you know what – it worked.  Maybe peaceful tactics really do get the job done.  Serve with cucumber slices.

Well, sometimes I do make something fabulous, or eat somewhere fabulous, take pics, but then never get around to writing about it.  Well, here’s a wrap up of some food stories I just never bothered to tell you about.  I mean, I guess I have to wipe the blog clean, or some other dumb end of year crap.

Fried Eggplant and Fresh Tomato Sauce

Back in the summer, I bought tons of eggplants (can this be a plural word?) and tons of tomatoes.  Now, we know that 80P doesn’t eat raw tomatoes, and he just started to get into eggplant, so I had to find a way to incorporate both veggies into one dish.  Yes, frying would be the way to go.  Now, I don’t remember the recipe, but this was my first attempt at breading and frying eggplant.  It actually didn’t work out perfectly, as I cut the eggplant too thick and had to finish them off in the oven.   The sauce was awesome though.  I can’t remember what secret tricks I put in it (no sugar, belmontmedina!), but it turned out really well.  I normally don’t like tomato sauce, but I was surely a fan of my version.

Keep reading for gansie’s vault of forgotten posts

Parsley-Feta Sauce with Squash and Shells

You’ve probably noticed, but parsley is my favorite fresh herb.  I especially love to make sauces out of it.  And I never have a fridge without feta in it.  Feta is just so great because it can be morphed into something crumbly or smooth.

This dish was a summer pasta salad.  I loved the little shells and the extra parm cheese shredded on top.  Plus, I made this early enough in the season when I wasn’t totally fucking sick of squash yet.

Mack & Manco

Okay, Mack & Manco.  If there’s one thing Jersey does right, well, besides attitude, it’s pizza.  And this shop down the Shore totally proves my point.  With only three locations—all along the Ocean City boardwalk—it’s always been a special summer treat, especially during my high school days.  And that is in no way due to the fact that they always hired the hottest, tannest boys to serve up slices to admiring teenagers.  The crust is thin, soft, crunchy.  The cheese and sauce are in perfect ratio.  Oh, and did I mention the boys are cute?

I usually frequent the farmers’ market by myself, but this weekend I got 80P out of his hangover-I-want-bed mode and took him with me.  And this resulted in the purchase of radishes.  They had samples out and it’s kinda weird because they’re spicy.  Anyway, we now have like 5 fucking radishes and I have no idea what to do with them.  80 says he used to eat them as a kid with salt, but um, there must be something else out there.  I’m thinking I could use them as a alternative to a chip for a dip.  But any suggestions would be appreciated.

Anyway, this post has nothing to do with radishes.  And don’t you think radish should have two “d”s in it?

Even though a lot of the workforce likes to go out for lunch during the week, I love bringing my food.  No shock there.  For today’s lunch I took full advantage of my market purchase, including these funky greens that 80 also added to my cart: mizuna.  We were just going to buy a bunch of mustard greens but then the upseller said there’s a special: 2 bunches for $5, so 80 grabbed mizuna.  Um, yea, I know, what the eff is mizuna.

Eggplant and Mizuna Salad

I risked the safety of not only the baking sheet, but of my entire apartment building, by putting the sheet in the broiler.  I had no idea if it would stand up to the heat, but I had no other choice – I had to try broiled eggplant after I saw this recipe.  The baking sheet is a bit warped now, but I have a feeling it will be worth it.  (I’ll comment post lunch with an update.)

I let the recipe guide me, but I added some extra things in.  I mixed together: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, grated garlic (it’s so fun to grate garlic, but sometimes it chips my nail polish and I don’t like that), cumin, paprika, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.  I brushed that mixture on both sides of the eggplant slices and put it under the broiler for 5 minutes.  The baby eggplants do not take long at all.

Oh, and I’ve been into roasting eggplant lately, but that means I scoop out the middle and toss the skin.  I looked up the nutrient make-up of the eplant and flavinoids and antioxidants are found in the skin so I thought this broiling technique would work well and be fast – I didn’t want to be stuck standing at the stove, frying the eggplant, batch after batch.

Okay, so then I added the eggplant in with half a can of chickpeas and crumbled feta and like a good ESer, I added in some toasted pine nuts. But then I thought the salad looked a little puny so I quickly wilted some of the mizuna in a drop of oil and salt and pepper.  I really have no idea what mizuna tastes like, although it looks very marijuana-like.  And I’m gonna dress the salad with the leftover tahini sauce I made for the cauliflower.  Although, it might not even need the sauce, I’ll let you in on that as well.

So readers, I know the pages of ES can sometimes contain an iota of whining and frustration. We are not professional chefs; avocados and pine nuts can only save so much (I kid, I kid). We of course have never made a claim that this would be a bitch-free blog.

But this time, if you read complaints from Gansie in the coming weeks about chicken pot pie, you only have yourself to blame!! If only one of you fools had switched allegiances and voted for lasagna, she wouldn’t be so stressed about cooking a dish for the first time on television! In front of a panel of judges! I am referring of course to the infamous Lasagna-Pot Pie election of 2008. The voting ended recently and chicken pot pie beat out lasagna by 1 vote, 40 to 39.

And while Gansie would have wowed the judges with her amazing eggplant/chickpea lasagna, it is going to take some real digging and testing to figure out how to make a crazy chicken pot pie. You know she won’t just cook a plain Jane version. And since we love reader participation in everything we do here, feel free to add some of your ideas for Gansie’s future chicken pot pie in the comment section.

While you all comment, I will be starting my op-research on her competitors. Those bastards fellow cooks must have some skeletons in their closets.

Photo: flickr user Travis S.