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Evening, with Eggplant

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September 26, 2011 By In condiments & pickles, csa & vegetables, eat me

Or why I will never make baba ghanoush the old way again. Let me explain.

Inspired by last week’s post-market triumph over the eggplant, I picked up another one this Saturday (along with a pile of vegetables we will figure out what to do with as the week progresses–stay tuned!). As regular readers know, last week was the episode in which I discovered that the key to delicious eggplant was burning it to a crisp under the broiler for almost an hour (I can’t even imagine how much better this gets if you have a gas range and can actually light it up over a flame). Thanks, Yotam Ottolenghi! I owe you one. And it seems I am not alone.

This week, I turned again to the source of past glories, seeking new triumphs: Ottolenghi’s Plenty. I know! An actual paper cookbook! Offline cooking is a little odd for me, seeing as I am traditionally leashed to Epicurious and fellow bloggers for inspiration, but it’s working so I’m stirring with the flow. I promise to stop quoting Ottolenghi soon, but meanwhile I can’t seem to help myself. The food is vegetarian (a major point in this kitchen!), unfussy yet interesting and, most importantly, delicious. Real cookbooks: previously only collecting dust, now equally splattered with cooking oil. Somehow, this feels like progress.

So, back to the baba. “Burnt eggplant with tahini” is not much more than that, but somehow the proportions of the makings, not to mention the chance to get that bottle of pomegranate molasses out of the fridge and back into action, made this scrape-together-and-stir dish extra fetching. Look out, next cocktail party! Here we come.

Burnt Eggplant with Tahini

Adapted from Plenty by Yotam Ottlenghi

1 large eggplant
1/3 cup tahini
*1T to 1/4 cup water
1 T pomegranate molasses
2 T lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, crushed and mashed with a little salt
3 T chopped parsley
salt and pepper, to taste
**handful of pomegranate seeds
olive oil to finish

Broil eggplant for 45 minutes to 1 hour (depending on size), turning half way through, until flesh is well charred. Cut open and removed flesh into a sieve to drain.*

In a wide bowl, mix eggplant with tahini, water, pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper. Mash and stir (a dinner fork worked will for me), adding additional pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, and/or garlic as needed to suit your tastes (I got in at least one additional glug of molasses** before all was said and done).

If you want to do it up fancy, you can spread the dip into a dish and top with a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of pomegranate seeds, and a few parsley leaves. If it’s for personal use, just exercise restraint and try not to eat the entire bowl with your mixing spoon.

*There’s some business about draining the eggplant flesh after roasting, but then you add in a 1/4 cup water afterwards. While there may be good reason for this in/out process, I simply drained briefly and then only added a splash of water. Any more and the texture risked unpleasantness, so exercise caution.

**If this dish was for a cocktail party, I would have sprung for the fresh pomegranate seeds to sprinkle over the top, but as it was just me and my crackers, I simply added an extra splash of the molasses. A less photogenic dish, admittedly, but it won’t be around long enough for anyone to complain about it.

Falling Back Into Soup

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September 18, 2011 By In breads & breakfast, csa & vegetables, eat me, soups

Crisp temperatures required that I actually dig proper shoes out of the closet before hitting the farmer’s market this weekend. Suddenly sweet potatoes and squash sounded appetizing. Weird how nature works like that. Summer, it seems, is saying her farewells.

When I got my weekly produce haul home and out on the counter, I spent fifteen minutes dreaming up multiple, complex culinary projects that would suit a blog post here before I stumbled on Yotam Ottlenghi’s recipe for Broiled Vegetable Soup and realized I had the exact combination of veggies needed for this single, elegantly simple dish. It was irresistible. Some people play sudoku; I get a little jolt of dopamine when I read through an ingredient list and realize I have just enough of this and that and that other thing to make it work out perfectly.

Aside: the eggplant is a vegetable that I want to love unreservedly, but that I frequently despise because I have cooked it poorly. No more! When prepping it for soups and spreads, the “hour under the broiler” method Ottlenghi suggests will be my new go-to. Doing so chars the outside to a crisp so that you then literally crack it open to scoop out the beautifully cooked meat inside.

Okay, back to the soup. While I said I had just enough of everything, my available ratio of nightshades definitely favored the tomato, so unsurprisingly my soup led with that on the palate. Still, the rich and smokey eggplant on the base and the fresh basil on the top notes make this soup a stand out. My real coup here, however, was that I had scored a bag of fresh lima beans, so no canned mush in my ladle. The resulting bowl was a perfect match to the season.

You cannot (or at least I certainly will not) have soup without bread, however, and I had just seen a recipe I wanted to try out that used left over dill pickle juice as part of the liquid. You might have noticed that I’ve been making a few pickles here and there this summer, so I have spare dill-spiked brine all over the place. It seemed a similar-enough thing when I started, but I began to change my mind as I worked. I think the sweet, less vinegar-y commercial dill pickle juice that was suggested in the recipe would have suited this project fantastically, but my homemade pickling leftovers were a little too pungent. Still, it got me out of my rye bread rut, so all was not lost. And it makes great toast!

Broiled Vegetable Soup

From Plenty by Yotam Ottlenghi

3 medium eggplants
2 red bell peppers, stems and seeds removed (I used 2 roasted red peppers out of jar on hand)
3 medium tomatoes
2 red onions, diced
2 T olive oil
3/4 basil leaves, torn
2 oregano springs, leaves only
10 garlic cloves
1 qt vegetable stock (I had less eggplant and only ended up needing 3 cups to get a good consistency soup)
salt and pepper
4 cups cooked lima beans (fresh, if you have them)
yogurt or lemon to garnish

The best part of this recipe is the taste that the broiling of the vegetables gets out of them (or at least that’s what Ottlenghi writes and, after sampling, I would have to agree). Set the broiler on high. Prick the eggplant a few times with a fork and place in a foil-lined pan. Broil for 30 minutes.

At the 30 minute mark, turn the eggplant over with tongs and add the 2 peppers to the pan. Broil for 15 more minutes, turning the peppers half way through.

Place the tomatoes in a second foil-lined pan and at the 45 minute mark, add them to the oven on a rack beneath the already broiling vegetables. Broil for an additional 15 minutes, and then remove all vegetables from the oven, wrapping the peppers in foil. Once the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel them and roughly chop. Scoop out the flesh of the eggplant, leaving the charred skin behind.

In a stock pot , saute the onion in the olive oil on low for 20 minutes, until soft and golden (I started this when I put my tomatoes in the oven and the timing worked out well). To this pot then add the scooped eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, stock, oregano, half the basil, salt and peppers and simmer for 15 minutes. Blend until smooth and add cooked lima beans, reheating as needed. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve topped with yogurt or lemon and the remaining basil leaves. A slice of freshly baked bread on the side won’t do you wrong, either.

Eggplant Endgame

eggplant
October 14, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

So, I don’t stalk the Smitten Kitchen exactly (ahem), but the growing season being the growing season, I also happened to have three small eggplants that needed to be put to a good use tonight (okay, probably two nights ago–it’s been a long week!). So at the end of the workday, into the oven they and the tomatoes and garlics and onions went. Roast, roast, simmer, simmer, blend, season, and BAM!–there was soup.

I swapped Penzeys sweet (2 tsp) and hot (1 tsp) curry powder for the thyme, and tahini and lemon for the cream. It ain’t the prettiest dish I’ve ever made, but it is dee-lish. Promise.