The Cartoon Kitchen: Twice-Squeezed Eggplant
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on eggplant. —Ed Levine
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Entries from Recipes tagged with 'eggplant'
Dinner Tonight: Steamed Spicy Eggplant
My previous experimentation with eggplants scorched them on an iron skillet to create this wonderful smokey baba ghanoush, so I was a little worried about the gentle steaming I was in for with these guys. Well, only slightly worried considering Jean-Georges Vongerichten penned the recipe. This comes from his Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges. I jumped on it because it’s one of the very few recipes in the book that could be done fairly quickly and without thirty ingredients.
There was only one ingredient I couldn’t find. The recipe calls for Shaoxing wine, but my humble Mid-West wine store didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I wasn't sure quite what to do, so I did what I would normally do for a wine I couldn't find: I used vermouth. I’m pretty sure the characteristics didn’t match up, but you can’t really deny the majesty of these eggplants. Just after a quick dip in this sauce, they picked up this wonderful depth and heat. It’s quite different than the scorched skin method, and a vast improvement over this Jacques Pepin recipe I tried last year.
Sack Lunch: Black Bean Chili with Eggplant
Lately I’ve been wondering if I should add "freezing food in individual portions" to my list of interests on Facebook. For one long, dark year I lived in a Park Slope studio with no freezer, unable to save leftovers and frequently forced to eat entire pints of ice cream in a single sitting. Ever since I have appreciated my freezer and used it as much as possible, although the serving size of ice cream that satisfies me now remains tragically huge.
Since I don’t always have the time or ingredients to pack even a sandwich, my frozen stash of soup, stew, and other leftovers has often been the only thing standing between me and a mediocre but depressingly expensive business-district lunch. Although some things (especially potato-based soups, in my experience) suffer for having been frozen, most come out just fine and are given additional relish by the thrill (okay, for me) of enjoying the fruits of my earlier labor.
Dinner Tonight: Pez De Tierra (Eggplant Fries)
The recipe translates as “Land Fish”, which I’m sure has a storied history. But I like to think of them as eggplant fries, however wrong that must be. I just wanted to toss them in a cardboard container and scoop them up three at a time.
I’m not sure if this is what the author wanted. There is only a passing remark to the fast food side, saying to cut the eggplant “as for french fries.” They are really looking for fat wedges. But I think they taste better the smaller and more fry-like they become. They become super crisp, but still juicy and full flavored. And unlike their potato counterparts, these “fries” only require one dip in the oil and are done in about 2 minutes. That’s something I’d be far more willing to do on weeknight, no matter what it is called.
Dinner Tonight: Baba Ghanoush
Because I spend most of day on the road, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Once I’ve exhausted more NPR than anyone should stomach in one day, I move on to different stations and topics, and obviously on to a few about food. The best one I’ve found so far is KCRW’s Good Food, though it doesn’t really make much sense why I’d find it so engaging. The Market Report provides in depth news on sunny Santa Monica’s latest crops, not my dreary Midwestern truth. And the restaurant reviews about ethnic eateries around L.A. don’t help me one bit. But I listen because all this seems to interest me anyway, and because I’ll occasionally run into a quick little recipe that seems too perfect to be true.
This one is for baba ghanoush. It requires an iron skillet and a fork. No salting of the eggplant, no drying of the eggplant. Hell, they don’t even want you to wash the eggplant, because that would introduce water to the pan that might steam it. It takes all of 30 minutes, and comes out luscious and smoky. Best part, they call for those big honking eggplants that grow around here.
If you have any food podcasts to recommend, let me know!
Dinner Tonight: Broiled Eggplant Japonaise
This week's score at the farmers' market were a bunch of tiny little eggplants—all about the size of a small pickle. The proprietor said he preferred the taste of these smaller specimens, and that I would, too. Though they weren’t quite as long as the Japanese version, I knew that I’d have to look for my inspiration there, instead of from the mammoth, log-shape ones that take time to cook. And nothing says Asian flavor quite like Jacques Pepin.
All joking aside, the only real Asian flavor in this recipe is soy sauce, which probably makes this recipe as French as his accent. But it is good. I originally cooked these up as an appetizer but instead scarfed down the whole bowl before I even started the main event. It’s just another quick pick from Pepin’s Short-Cut Cook that manages to be suspiciously easy, even if it does look like a butch of slugs in a bowl.
