Two delicious ways to eat eggplant without an oven

No this isn't a fashion blog all of a sudden. When I came home from work on Monday, I discovered that H had organized half of my shoes all in a pretty row. She LOVES my shoes, and she treats them right too!


The first way to eat eggplant without turning on the oven:
This week I made one of my favorite Greek vegetable dishes, and if I do say so myself, it was truly delicious. So tasty in fact that we couldn't get any pictures of it! We bought a gigantic globe of an eggplant as well as 2 pints of green beans from our CSA, so I decided to make a Greek λαδερά (literally oily, but typically just stove-cooked vegetables) dish out of them. As long as you're willing to sit near the kitchen and stir every 15 minutes or so for an hour and a half, this dish is virtually effortless.

Eggplant and Green Bean Giahni (φασολάκια γιαχνί με μελιτζάνες)
This makes 2 quarts or so.
1/4 - 1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
2 pints fresh green beans, tips trimmed and halved
1 large or two medium eggplant, cubed to 1-2 inch pieces
1 large green pepper, sliced
28 oz can diced tomatoes
3 dried hot peppers
salt and pepper to taste
water, if needed (we used 3/4 cups)

This recipe hardly needs directions, it's so straightforward. What you do need is a good large stockpot or dutch oven.

Saute onions in 1/4 oil until they turn caramel colored. Add green pepper, eggplant, and green beans. Saute for a couple of minutes. Add tomatoes and hot peppers, salt, and water to submerge the veggies if it bothers you that they aren't all in liquid at the beginning of cooking.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

This dish is perfect with crusty bread, a thick slice of feta cheese, and a glass of wine.

The Second way to eat eggplant without turning on the oven:
We love eggplant around here, so we've stocked up on not only the large globe eggplants, but also on the long and slender Chinese eggplants. Tonight I made a quick stir-fry with eggplant, edamame, tomatoes, and bok choy.

Eggplant, Bok Choy and Edamame
Serves 3-4
2 cups edamame
2 heads of bok choy, greens and white stalk separated and chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 Chinese eggplant, sliced
Olive oil or vegetable oil for stirfry
2 smallish tomatoes, quartered or smaller
soy sauce
maple syrup
Chili paste with garlic
sesame oil

Stirfry the white stalk of the bok choy until it loses its rawness. Add garlic and bok choy greens, edamame and eggplant.
Mix up the sauce, and reduce the heat on the stirfry to medium low. Add the sauce and cook for 3-5 minutes. In the last minute, toss in the tomato.
We loved this dish with brown rice.



And a bonus, the kid version, edamame, bok choy, and brown rice without the spicy sauce

Beet, Eggplant, and Squash Curry, and our local beach

We have a whole drawer full of vegetables, including some summer squash that we don't like on their own, and some beets and potatoes that have been sitting there for a couple of weeks. So we decided it was time to whip out the curry pot!

Vegetable Curry with Coconut Milk
Serves 4

2 T Olive Oil
1 leek, sliced lengthwise and finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 medium beets, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic
1-2 T curry powder (recipe follows)
1 tsp ginger
1 cinnamon stick
14 oz can chopped tomatoes
1 potato or 2-3 new potatoes, quartered and thinly sliced
3 summer squash, halved and sliced thinly
1 eggplant, quartered and sliced thinly
1 green pepper
fresh Basil leaves
14 oz can coconut milk
Brown Rice

1) chop the veggies up.
2) Heat some oil in a large frying pan or skillet. Add onions and leeks and saute for 10 minutes or more.
3) Toss in the beets. Because I used unroasted beets, these have the longest cooking time by far and need at least 13-15 more minutes cooking than the other vegetables.
4) When the onion has softened and browned a bit, add the curry, ginger, and cinnamon stick and let all the spices roast for 2 minutes.
5) Add the tomatoes, eggplant, pepper, squash, and potatoes. Stir well and cover the pot. Cook for 20 minutes or more until your potatoes and squash are cooked.
6) Add the coconut milk, and stir well. Cook for 5 more minutes.


Eggplants, ready to go

This picture is for Dianne, these potatoes were out of this world good. They cooked faster than the squash!

All the veg, save the leeks and onions, in various states of preparation


Sauteing the leeks and onions. To this I added the beets after about 10 minutes, and then let the beets also saute for about 10 minutes.

The curry minus the coconut milk, that goes in in the last few minutes.


Curry with brown basmati rice, on the plate

Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Powder, from World Vegetarian

Makes 6 Tablespoons
2 T coriander seeds
1 T cumin seeds
2 tsp peppercorns
1 1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
5-6 whole cloves
3 dried hot chiles, crumbled
1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric

Heat a small frying pan over medium heat. Roast the whole seed spices until they smell a bit toasty. Add the turmeric and cook for 10 seconds. Transfer the spices to a clean coffee grinder and grind as finely as possible. Store out of direct sunlight and heat.

We ate our curry with brown basmati rice, and it was scrumptious!

This weekend, we finally ventured down to the James River, where we were promised a beach. I'm not sure I'd call it a beach, but it was pretty. H had a blast though, and ended up like our own little castaway. She met a little boy and together they caught a couple of tadpoles. Great fun!
Throwing rocks and pestering the water bug swarm.