Recipes from Cooking with Doyle Moore on Focus 580

April 4, 2007:  Eggplant

Eggplant is so versatile, but relatively newly known to mainstream American cooking.  It is known as a Mediterranean dish, and also in Indian and Chinese cooking, but how do Midwesterners deal with it? 

Eggplant is a member of the nightshade family, related to potatoes and tomatoes.  Though commonly thought of as a vegetable, it’s really a fruit, a berry.  The eggplant is native to southern India and Sri Lanka, and became known to western world no earlier than 1500.  It got the name “eggplant” because some early western varieties were not very big and were yellow or white and so looked like eggs. 

To pick a good eggplant, look for a firm fruit with shiny skin.  It should not be wrinkled and should not have any soft spots.  There are now many different varieties available, especially during the summer.  There is no difference in taste among the varieties, but the smaller Asian eggplants are suited to slicing thin and long, spread out like a fan for a beautiful presentation, and are also easier to grill because they are smaller.  But if you want to make ratatouille, use a big eggplant.

A caller from Urbana offered a tip from a Moroccan cookbook about how to fry eggplant so it doesn’t soak up so much oil.  This is a problem, because the eggplant just soaks up the oil like a sponge.  Soak the eggplant in milk first.  Cut the eggplant up, soak it in milk, then pour off the milk and go ahead and fry the eggplant.  

EGGPLANT SIDE DISH

Cut eggplant in half and char it over the gas burner as you would do with bell peppers.  Blacken the skin, then remove the skin.  This roasting gives it a nice smoky flavor.  Make it into a cold side dish by putting it into yogurt.  If you want to put hot chilies in that, you can do that too, or some cilantro.  Or take some crushed black mustard seeds, crushed cumin seeds, and some cilantro, a bit of sugar and salt.

EGGPLANT STIR-FRY

Caller from Urbana gets wonderful eggplants from the Far East, a store on Fifth Street.  She steams or broils the eggplant.  Slice thinly, spray with food spray, and then put it under the broiler.  This way, you don’t have to deep fry it, and it comes out brown and delicious and ready to use in a stir-fry.  Alternatively, use a pan with a little water and steam it first, it looks awful, but then you put it in a stir-fry and it’s delicious.  Or, after broiling, put in plastic container and freeze; defrost and use with tofu and other vegetables, mostly in Asian recipes.  It is also good in vegetarian chopped liver.

Hunan-style Eggplant Salad -

Thin Hot and Sour Dressing

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce

• 4 tablespoons vinegar

• 2 tablespoons sesame oil

• 1½ tablespoons hot red pepper oil

• 1 teaspoon brown sugar

• 2 tablespoons salad oil or vegetable oil

• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

• 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic

• 1 tablespoon minced scallions

• 1 tablespoon white wine

• 1 tablespoon cilantro

• 1-2 cups chicken broth

Mix all the above condiments together.  It makes a very thin sauce, nice and hot, with a very rich taste.  Except for the chicken broth, this is sort of like a spicy Asian vinaigrette; you can use less of the chicken broth than the recipe calls for, and the sauce is still quite thin.

You put this sauce on:

EGGPLANT SALAD

• 1 medium-sized American eggplant, peeled (or 3-4 oriental eggplants)
• 1½  cups thin hot and sour salad dressing (see above)
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon finely minced scallions
• 1 tablespoon finely minced cilantro

Peel the eggplant, cut it into long thin pencil-like strips, and then instead of steaming the eggplant, microwave it for 4 minutes.  It becomes soft and pliable and very tender. 

Shred or slice the eggplant into very thin strips, the thinner the better.  Put it on a serving plate and pour the salad dressing over it.  Add some extra sesame oil on top, and garnish with the minced scallions and cilantro.  Let it cool.  Something about the sesame oil  gives it an alluring, exotic taste.

GRILLED EGGPLANT

Another caller from Urbana uses the skinny small Japanese style eggplants.  Cut them in half length-wise, score them diagonally down to the skin in two directions so you end up with a diamond pattern.  Chop up garlic and rosemary and sprinkle those into the grooves; brush with a bit of olive oil, and then broil.  The result is soft inside with a darkened crispy top.

Doyle recently visited the new Pasha restaurant which had an eggplant dish called Imam Bayildi (“the priest fainted” – either because it tasted so good, or because it used so much expensive olive oil).  Wonderful.

IMAM BAYILDI

• 1 large or 2 small eggplants, cut in half
• 3 onions
• 2 bell peppers
• 2 cloves garlic
• ¼ cup parsley, chopped
• 1 tomato, sliced in rings (or used chopped)
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil
• 1 can tomato sauce

Cut the eggplant.  Sprinkle with salt and drain on paper towels at least ½ hour.  Dry well.  Brush with olive oil and roast in a 450º oven till lightly golden.

Meanwhile, sauté onion, bell pepper, and garlic until wilted.  Add parsley and tomato and sauté a little longer, making a vegetable gravy.  Arrange eggplant halves in a baking dish and slice them on the top so they open up, then stuff the eggplants with the vegetable mixture.  Pour a little bit of olive oil over it, put in water at the bottom and ¼ cup olive oil; or pour a can tomato sauce.  Bake at 375º about 30 minutes.  It caramelizes.

The cookbook Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop has pages of eggplant recipes.  He recommends using regular (i.e., American) eggplants, cut into ¾ - inch rounds.  Marinate for an hour in ½ cup lemon juice with ¼ cup olive oil, 4 medium garlic cloves minced, 1 Tbsp minced fresh oregano, and salt; then grill.  Again, the idea is to have it dark and crusty on the outside and mushy on the inside.

NEPALESE RECIPE FOR EGGPLANT WITH CILANTRO

This recipe becomes a beautiful pale green color because of the cilantro in it.  Bake the eggplant in the oven until it’s soft, 25-45 minutes.  Peel the skin and remove the seeds.  Sauté with a little bit of oil in a pan, adding some fenugreek seeds; remove from the heat and add about ½ cup chopped cilantro leaves, peeled and chopped ginger root, peeled and chopped garlic, coriander powder, and lemon juice; mix it all together and let sit for about half an hour.  Serve with crackers.

SMOKED EGGPLANT RAITA

A caller from Champaign reports that there are hundreds of ways of cooking eggplant in India.  A favorite is smoked eggplant.  The eggplant is grilled on the coals to get the smoky taste, and then scraped out and cooked.  It can be used in a raita of yogurt with mint and chopped onions, a nice side dish which has a cooling effect on the palate which makes it a good foil for spicy Indian dishes. Ground roasted cumin and paprika are sprinkled on top; if you want to live dangerously you can put chopped green chili in the raita.

BARTHA

Another popular dish that uses smoked eggplant.  You smoke the eggplant on the coals (or a gas fire) and scrape it out, though a few flecks of the smoked skin add to the flavor.  Chop onions, ginger, garlic (all fresh), and fry that with turmeric; this does drink oil.  Put in green chilies, chopped tomatoes (can use canned), let it cook in the oil until the tomatoes give off the oil.  Then stir in the eggplant and let it absorb some of the oil.  Garnish with cilantro.