Mini Grilled Eggplant

When I saw these mini eggplants in the store I just had to buy them. I had no idea what I would do with them! The shop owner said that usually people cooked them with walnuts. I'm guessing that is a mediterranean way of cooking them. I searched the web but couldn't find anything that hit the spot, so I went out on a limb and created my own recipe.

Preparation time: 1.25 hours; serves 4 as a main dish

Ingredients:

1 kg	Eggplant (about 16 fruit)
1/2 - 1 tbsp.	Salt
3 tbsp.	Oil
1/4 tsp.	Turmeric powder
1/4 tsp.	Chilli flakes
1/2 tsp.	Ground cumin
	Black pepper, freshly ground
Ingredients for sauce
1/2 cup	Coconut cream
1 tbsp.	Miso paste
1/2 tsp.	Dark soya sauce
1/4 tsp.	Chilli powder
A few mint leaves finely chopped, to garnish Method:

Wash the eggplant and slice lengthwise down the middle. Leave the stem on so that the fruit stays together. It also makes it look pretty and gives you something to grab the fruit by once it is cooked and soft.

Place the eggplant cut side up on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt. Leave them to stand for at least 20 minutes, but no more than 1 hour. You should see beads of moisture form on the top of the eggplant.

While the salt is drawing out the water from the eggplant you can set about making the sauce. It's a really simple sauce to make, but it's full of punch. Simply put all ingredients in a small saucepan, put it on medium heat and stir to combine all the ingredients. I don't know if you can replace the coconut cream with fresh coconut milk. Maybe if you squeezed some fresh milk and then let it sit for a while in the fridge, you could skim off the cream. You might also be able to make a thick cream from Maggie coconut milk powder, but I have not tried it yet. I used canned coconut cream. The dark soya sauce give the sauce a bit of colour. Contrary to what you might think dark soya sauce has a lower sodium content than the light variety. Adjust the chilli powder to your taste. 

Bring the sauce to a boil over medium heat (about 5 minutes) and then reduce the heat to the lowest setting possible and simmer for about 10 minutes. 

By now the eggplant has probably been sitting for long enough. Wipe off the moisture that has formed on the top of the cut surface with a paper towel and try to take some of the salt off too. You don't need to get all the salt off because there won't be anymore salt added. Just the excess that fell on the baking tray and that sticks to your paper towel and hands.

If your grill needs to be pre-heated now is the time to put it on (a Foreman grill won't work because it will squash the eggplant).

Now with a very sharp knife score the top of the eggplant as show in the photograph below. Don't cut all the way through to the skin, but go deep enough so that the spices get inside and so that it cooks quicker.

Place the eggplants cut side up on a baking tray that can be used under a grill and brush the cut surface with oil. Then take a pinch of turmeric and sprinkle a tiny bit on each cut surface. Do the same with the ground cumin. Note that there is more cumin than turmeric so you should put twice as much cumin as turmeric. Finally crack some fresh black pepper on top and sprinkle with chilli pieces if desired.  

Flip the eggplant over and oil the skin sides of the eggplant.

Put the fruit under the grill at 240 C for 2 minutes or until golden brown. If the fruit is too close to the heat the skin will burn, which has it's own taste but might not be what you are looking for. I had mine on the second level from the top. 

Flip the eggplant and continue to grill for another 8 minutes. If your eggplants are not getting nice and golden on the top, but they are cooked, move the baking tray closer to the heat source. Keep a sharp eye out to make sure you don't burn them.

Reheat the sauce while the eggplant is cooking so it can be served hot.

Remove the eggplant from the grill and serve immediately with the coconut/miso sauce. 

You can sprinkle some finely chopped mint either on the eggplant (if you are serving the sauce on the side) or after pouring the sauce on the eggplant. 

Or you could cook them till they are just cooked and then put them back under the grill just before serving to brown the tops. Reheat the sauce, adding a bit more coconut cream if it has dried out, and serve hot. 

Here is a shorter version to use when cooking https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DgJXRfl66SHnFnMRu5S3xvAP8cbqOMmGMDFnXVNoOSE/edit?usp=sharing

Eggplant with Tofu - Chinese

This year I planted eggplant in my small vegetable patch. It amazingly survived 3 super hot summer weeks without water and produced a decent number of fruit. Not enough for our normal consumption but enough to enjoy.
I also had a cabbage plant that did not do well at all. It grew tall and flowered. The blooms were really pretty so I just let it be. Turns out that the seeds from the cabbage dropped all over my vegetable patch and late in the summer I had literally hundreds of tiny cabbage plants. I had to thin them out because there was no way that any would survive at that density.
So there I was with a couple of eggplants and heaps of very young green cabbage and dinner to cook! I figured I'd try and put them together Chinese style because I also happened to have a pack of tofu in the fridge.

Served over udon noodles

The resulting experiment was very well received, which led to me having to jump up from the dinning table and grab a pen and paper before I forgot what I had put in to it. It took me a while to revisit the recipe, but that is exactly what I did last night. I didn't have any homegrown produce so I thought it might not taste as good. This didn't seem to be a problem. My teenager stuffed her face and could not keep saying how good the food was! This is not the normal reaction I get these days. Normally I get "oh, not that AGAIN!". So I figured I better post this recipe before I loose my notes!

Preparation time: 1.5 hours ; serves 8 (together with a couple other dishes) 

Ingredients:

800 g	Eggplant
1 bunch	Any type of greens (mustard, leafy green cabbage, etc.)
1 pack	Firm tofu
8 tbsp.	Oil
1 tbsp.	Minced garlic
1 tbsp.	Minced ginger
Sauce
1 1/2 tsp.	Bulion powder or 1 veggie cube
250 ml	Water
4 tsp.	Soya sauce
1 tbsp.	Hoisin sauce
1/2	Lemon, juice of
1 tbsp.	honey (substitute maple syrup if vegan)
1 tsp.	Sirachara sauce

Method:
First of all let me say that the amount of eggplant and greens that you use is not that precise. I used 2 eggplants and I am pretty sure they were much smaller the first time around. If you eat a large amount of tofu you could use 2 packs instead of one. And I really can't tell you what a "bunch" is!! Chopped up I had a cereal bowl full (how big is your cereal bowl?). Sorry that I forgot to weigh the greens :(

Start by cutting the tofu into this slices about 5 mm thick. Lay the slices out on a paper towel, cover with a second paper towel and leave them to allow the water to be absorbed. While your tofu is drying cut the eggplant into 1 cm dice (fancy way to say 1 cm cubes) and wash and roughly chop your greens. You can really use any greens that you like. First time around I used a bowl full of young cabbage plants, the second time around I just picked up some nice looking green stuff from the local Turkish store. I don't even know what they were, but they looked mighty like kale. It might be a good idea to try greens that won't loose too much water when you cook them.

Heat 2 tablespoons of your oil in a frying pan, over medium high heat and add a layer of tofu rectangles. You need to make sure there is no overlap. Fry each side until slightly brown and then flip them over and do the other side. Drain them on paper towels. I had to do three batches. The best type  of pan to use is of course a cast iron pan. I happened to use a heavy bottomed non-stick skillet this time around and it worked fine.
If you're pan runs dry of oil add another tablespoon. If there is not enough oil your tofu won't become golden brown and will dry out before giving you any colour.

Once the tofu is done add 4 tablespoons of the oil and fry the eggplant. Give it a good stir at the beginning so that all the pieces are coated with oil. Fry the eggplant until cooked through and possible browning. You'll need to stir it once every minute or so to make sure it browns evenly, and doesn't stick or burn. While you're doing this you can mix the sauce together. Just get a large enough bowl and mix all the "sauce" ingredients. You can also get your ginger and garlic ready. There should be plenty of time! Eggplant takes a while. Once the eggplant is cooked tip it out into a bowl and return the pan to the cooker.

If you are preparing other dishes and want this to go to the table piping hot you can stop right now. The rest will take you about 10 minutes to put together.

 Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan and tip in the ginger and garlic. Saute for 5 seconds. Don't let them burn, although browning is okay. Add the sauce, mix well and bring to the boil. Then add the tofu to the pan and bring it back to the boil. Use a slotted spoon to remove the tofu and arrange on a serving dish.

Add the eggplant to the pan and toss in the sauce. Bring to the boil and then using a slotted spoon spoon out and place on top of the tofu.

Finally add the greens to what is left of the sauce. Saute until cooked (i.e. the greens are limp) and tip the greens together with the remaining sauce onto the eggplant.

Serve steaming hot with jasmine rice or with udon noodles.

Here is a printable version

Makhouda D'Aubergine (or Batu Quiche)

After spending the whole day in the kitchen I must say I'm relieved to be able to sit down and type instead. It's not like a whole lot of cooking was going on. No, I was stacking away all the groceries from last nights run and decided to clean out one of my drawers. Then my kids decided to clean out my baking drawer, now that was like opening up a can of worms. But it was finally clean and the girls were very proud of themselves. Except that the counter tops had all kinds of stuff that had to be washed or trashed, that was of course left up to me!

For dinner tonight we are having an eggplant quiche. It's the kind of quiche that has everyone in the house salivating when I just mention that it's on the menu for dinner. Well worth the time it takes to make it and very forgiving.

Preparation time: 45 min. + 45 min. baking; Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 ~500g	Eggplant (large)
	Salt for sprinkling
3 tbsp.	Oil
1	Onion, finely diced
1	Red bell pepper, finely diced
8	Eggs (L)
1/4 cup	Minced fresh parsley
1 tbsp.	Minced garlic
250 g	Emmental cheese
1/2 cup	Bread crumbs
1/4 tsp.	Ground rose buds
1/4 tsp.	Ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Chili powder
1/4 tsp.	Coriander powder

Method:

The tough part about this recipe (and the main reason why I don't cook it more often) is the dicing. It does take a bit of time to get everything cut to the right size. Today I spent about 30 minutes just dicing the eggplant, onion and peppers! I dice everything to around 5 mm.

If you are using Asian eggplants then you should use at least 2 of them and maybe even 3. What is wonderful about this recipe is that you can have more or less eggplant and it doesn't change the taste all that much. If you have the time, once you've diced the eggplant sprinkle it with salt and let it sit for at least 30 minutes. Then wash it and pat it dry. Needless to say I usually skip this step.

Instead of red bell pepper you can use other peppers. I've used green bell peppers and capsicums as substitutes and the quiche still tastes great.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, add the eggplant, onion and pepper and cook until they are golden brown. Stir the vegetables occasionally.

While this is cooking you can get the rest of the ingredients ready. Chop the parsley, mince the garlic and dice the cheese into 7 mm cubes. Sometimes when I cook this dish I don't have all the proper ingredients. Instead of parsley I've used coriander leaves and the cheese varies according to what is around. In Sri Lanka I use the local Gouda, in the USA Swiss. If I want to be fancy I use some Gruyere.

Then lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl and add ALL the ingredients to it. Make sure that the vegetables have cooled down a little bit before you add them. If they are too hot the egg will get cooked and the quiche will not be as tasty.

Turn the mixture into a 2-quart souffle dish or into ramekins or muffin pans and bake at 180 C in a fan oven (200 C/400 F conventional). A 2-quart souffle dish will take around 45 minutes to bake, while the smaller dishes take less time. You'll know that it's done when the top is golden brown and puffed and when you insert a knife it comes out clean. Be careful if your knife hits a melted piece of cheese it won't come out clean even if the quiche is done!

It can be served pipping hot with a fresh green salad and bread or just by itself. Wonderful to use to fill sandwiches the next day! Can also be cubed up and served with cocktail sticks as an appetizer or snack.

This recipe was adapted from "The Vegetarian Table North Africa" by Kitty Morse

And here is a Chef friendly version

Eggplant Parmesan

It's been a busy week and I haven't gotten round to cooking much. Okay, I did cook yesterday but that was just caramelized leek quiche and a pumpkin pie. The first I've already posted and the second... well let me say that no one except me enjoyed it :( Unfortunate for the "others" they are stuck with it for dessert until it is over :)
Today was busy too but the eggplant was not going to last much longer. I figured eggplant Parmesan would be a good option to use it up. I search for the recipe on food.com (that's where I first found the recipe). But oh my, our internet connection has been really slow for many websites (thank goodness not blogger) and I could not download the recipe. I had to kind of go at it blind. So what you have here is not a traditional eggplant Parmesan but some modified version of it!

Serves 8; Preparation time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Ingredients

1 kg	Eggplant
	Salt for sprinkling
1	Egg
1 tbsp.	Flour
3 tbsp.	Milk
2 cups	Bread crumbs
	Oil for frying
800 ml	Pasta sauce (tomato)
3 tbsp.	Cream
1/4 cup	Basil leaves (loosely packed)
2 tbsp.	Thyme
125 g	Fresh mozzarella
1/2 cup	Grated Parmesan

Method:

I'd decided on eggplant Parmesan pretty early in the afternoon. So I took a break from my work and sliced the eggplant into slices about 1 cm thick. (Note this is a European eggplant so it's big and fat. If you have the Asian variety I would slice it lengthwise instead of crosswise.) Then I sprinkled it liberally with salt and put it in a colander to rest. I went back to work and literally forgot about it!

Next there was the rush... 15 minutes to move dinner along before running out of the house to pick up my youngest one from Viola lessons. What could I possibly get done in 15 minutes and without a recipe? So I just guessed. I put two skillets on the cooker on high heat (with one I was never going to be done in time). Then I washed the salt off the eggplant and beat up an egg with some flour and milk. I didn't measure anything precisely but I know that I used 2 heaped teaspoons of flour, which is probably the same as in the ingredients above. I must have put about 3 tablespoons of milk in. But you know what, it's not a precise science. I just needed something that would stick the breadcrumbs to the eggplant. Anything that you use to make a cutlet or Chinese roll should do too. I do believe that the egg makes it crunchy so don't leave that out. 

To fry eggplant you need a lot of oil. There is something about eggplant that makes it only taste good if it is doused in oil! So I poured some oil into the pan then one by one patted the eggplant dry with a kitchen towel, to remove some of the dampness so that the batter adheres better, dipped them in the batter then into the breadcrumbs and fried them. When I turned them I added extra oil to the pan else the breadcrumbs would not become golden brown. And I reduced the heat else the breadcrumbs start burning and that is a mess. Here is what they looked like:

It took me 15 minutes to finish all of them and get out of the house. I was in time to pick up my child. Phew!!

Once I got home again I had to put everything together. I first set the oven to 160 Celsius and then got to work. I picked my largest casserole dish and poured in about 300 ml of pasta sauce from a jar. Then I arranged the fried eggplant on top of it. Since I had so much eggplant I put two layers of eggplant. Then I used the cream to clean out the empty pasta sauce jar and poured that on top.

There were some herbs that still had not died! A basil plant, which is on it's last legs and the thyme plant which was bought for the quiche. Actually the thyme has been doing really well since I started watering it. I didn't bother picking off the leaves of the thyme because the stalks were really soft so I just kind of broke it up over the dish. I did the same with the basil leaves (no stalks please!).

Then the rest of the tomato sauce was poured over and evenly distributed. Finally on went the cheese. The fresh Mozzarella was shredded and the Parmesan finely grated. All of this was popped in the oven for around 30 to 40 minutes. At some point I felt like the cheese was not browning quickly enough so I increased the temperature by 10 degrees. This helped speed up the cooking.

And while that all was cooking I managed to clean up the kitchen and make some pasta to eat with it. I took the opportunity to finish the linguine that I used for the half an hour pasta with mushroom dish. You can also eat it with bread or rice and serve a nice green salad with it if you want to be fancy.

Eggplant Curry

After feeling down all day (another job application rejected) I decided it was time to indulge and make a nice rice and curry for dinner. I've also been totally inspired by the Facebook group "SRI LANKAN FOOD LOVERS ACROSS THE WORLD" they post the most delicious pictures of the food they make. I have days when my mouth just waters and I have to go to the kitchen and grab a cookie and a cup of tea. But even that is sad because the cookie's are store bought and the tea is made via a tea bag :(

The recipe I'm going to post here is one that I came up with all alone! I was inspired by my aunt's eggplant curry, which was delicious, and I was trying to replicate it. It took me a long while to realize that, no, I was not going to be able to replicate it, but what I had come up with was pretty okay. In fact its terribly annoying when I make it because however much I make it gets all eaten up. Frying eggplant takes forEVER and then to see it being consumed within one meal is a bit depressing. I wish it would last for at least two meals!

This recipe serves 6 - 8 people when served together with a couple of other curries. How long it takes will depend totally on how you deep fry your eggplant!

So you'll find a detailed description of how to make it and then a link to a pdf with the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 kg	Eggplant (preferably the Asian or Japanese variety)
	Salt
1-2 L	Oil, for deep frying
125 g	Onion, finely sliced
1 sprig	Curry leaves
1/2 tsp	Dill seeds
250 g	Tomato, diced
1/2 tsp	Turmeric
1/2 - 1 tsp	Chili pieces
1/2 tsp	Salt
3 heaped tbsp	Maggie coconut milk powder mixed with 2 tbsp water (or 5 tbsp coconut cream)
2 tbsp	Vinegar
1 tsp	Roasted curry powder

Method:

First cut the eggplant into wedges as shown in the picture. Unfortunately, it's really difficult for me to get proper Sri Lankan eggplants. Mostly all that is available is the Italian variety. It's so much easier to cut the thin Asian eggplants. If each piece has a bit of the skin on it, it stops the vegetable from turning to mush. But one has to make do with what is available, sigh...

Once you've chopped up all the eggplant put it in a colander and liberally sprinkle salt over it. Mix it well so that all the veggie has some salt on it. If you remember, have the time, do this well in advance and let the eggplant sit for about an hour. This will remove all the yucky stuff from it. Now if you are like me and have only just decided that you want to cook eggplant for dinner, don't sweat. Most eggplants don't have the "kahata" that has to be removed and taste fine even if you don't let them sit in salt.

Once they've sat for long enough rinse them and then pat them dry with paper towels. If you don't remove the water they will just take longer to deep fry and the oil will spit. Now heat up your oil to around the temperature you use to make fries. On my deep fryer (which broke recently, aarrgghh!) I used the hottest setting and but since I had to do this in a saucepan I put my stove top onto it's highest setting. I used about a liter of oil and it took forever (I'm guessing about 60 to 90 minutes) for me to get all the eggplant fried to the desired crispiness. It ended up looking like this.

So while my eggplant was doing all it's sitting in salt and it's frying I got the other things ready. (I also cooked a pot of dahl, a potato curry and fried some papadum. My little angel made the rice for me. It took her forever but I didn't care those eggplant took forever too.)

I finely chopped the onion and stuck it in a bowl together with the curry leaves and the dill seeds (since I was going to fry these three things together anyway).

Next I diced my tomatoes. If you don't have nice fresh red ones you can also use canned ones (or if you are in a real pinch ketchup!).

I then took the biggest wok I have and heated up a tablespoon of oil on very high heat. Into that went the onions, curry leaves and dill seeds and I cooked it until the onions were soft. Once they were done in went the diced tomatoes, salt, turmeric and chili pieces. I stirred it all up and left it to cook until it turned into a nice paste. Some times I don't cook it so long, but today I had time because the eggplant took so long to fry without a deep-fryer.

Gosh, now the rest is pretty simple. Add the fried eggplant and stir it up. Get everything coated with the sauce and then add the vinegar. I use white vinegar but you can use which ever you like, the taste will just be a little bit different. Be careful if you are using concentrated vinegar, best to try a little at a time until you get the desired sourness. Stir everything up and then add the coconut milk. The coconut milk has to be really thick. I really like to use the top part of canned coconut milk but I'm not having any luck getting my favourite canned coconut milk. Which is surprisingly a local supermarket brand which has no additional chemicals and is 80% coconut fat. With that I only need about 3 tablespoons of milk. So I'm back to using Maggie piti kala pol kiri (coconut milk powder). I make sure I dissolve it in luke warm water otherwise it gets lumpy.

My, I'm just remembering how it was when that stuff first hit the market in SL. It was a total uproar. The housewives loved it and the husbands hated it. I remember not being able to tell the difference back then. I also remember one of my colleagues, who was my mothers age, telling us all proudly how her husband could not tell the difference although he claimed he could. She just kept the pack hidden from him!! Now I can tell the difference but unfortunately I'm not up for scrapping coconut every time I need a rice and curry fix.

Add the coconut milk into the curry, stir quickly bringing to the boil and then take off the heat. Sprinkle over the roasted curry powder and it's ready to serve. (We always mix in the curry powder because the kids don't like getting lumps of it.)

When this baby cools down all the oil comes to the surface so make sure it's served hot. And please beware this is a very oily curry.