We are going to be trying a Lot of Eggplant Recipes Around Here

Chopped up eggplants, red and orange Thai chiles, garlic, fish sauce and sugar, and holy basil

How many Green Thai Eggplants are in that last photo? There were TWENTY-FIVE. Because there are so many of them, I used the internet to look up recipes specifically for this variety of eggplant (usually termed “Brinjal”). I discovered that when I tried them this summer, when they first fruited, I was using over-ripe ones. When the seeds within are black and huge, the eggplants are bitter and SUCK. You are supposed to use them when the seeds are STILL WHITE!

So perhaps I will plant them again, because when you use them under-ripe, they are very , VERY good. They hold their shape under the duress of cooking better than other eggplants, and they have a softer, more melting quality (as opposed to “sorta slimy”.) Since I picked all of these small and because of the SNOW AND FREEZE, I am pretty sure they are ALL under-ripe; i.e.  Usable.

Tonight I went to the art show and private party/opening of local artist Valerie Fowler, and due to a variety of circumstances, I hadn’t eaten from 11AM til 10 PM (I MEANT to cook this eggplant dish for myself for Lunch, or early dinner! But I never had time. AND, I REFUSED to eat anything ELSE, because, did I mention I NEED TO USE UP TWENTY-FIVE EGGPLANTS?

Leaves of Sacred Basil

That just doesn’t happen if you give in to the temptation to grab a burger in the midst of your errands. It takes RESOLVE.

So I came home from the party, which R*O*CK*E*D and it is the best party of my entire year (okay, it is usually the ONLY party of my year) because I pretty much know at least HALF of the people who go to it and THEY ARE ALL MY FRIENDS! Plus Valerie sold a lot of her art (she usually does) so it was Very Festive!

ANYWAY, then I came home and made Pud Makua Yow: Basil Eggplant. I made it really really fast, too, because I was about ready to eat my own ARM off by that point! As Thai dishes (that I have made) go, this is THE FASTEST!

(While I was making it, I thought: “GoshDarnIt, I always use just the smallest drop of fish sauce because Dave thinks it smells so terrible. But I am starving and I want to use the full amount, and I am GOING TO! I mean, maybe he won’t even notice and I am being overly cautious…”

The second I added the fish sauce/sugar mixture, Dave came careening into the kitchen going, “WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!?!? OMIGOD     IT SMELLS LIKE DIRTY WHORE CROTCH!!      WHORE CROTCH!! WHORE CROTCH!!    How can you EAT that?!?!?!?”

["How can you eat that?!?"  being a not-uncommon remark from my vegetarian husband who hates food so much that he wishes "they just made a pill" so he would never have to eat again. Because the very idea of most foods is so revolting! "Mushrooms are a FUNGUS! Like athlete's foot! How could you eat a FUNGUS?"]

Later in the evening he respectfully requested that I NOT cook with fish sauce when he is home. So, heh, I guess I was right to be cautious in the past. Oh, and warning: fish sauce, it DOES smell kinda bad when you add it to the pan! And speaking of which, How does HE know what dirty whore crotch smells like?)

This dish is very easy and I make it a LOT, because I  have sacred basil and hot chiles (and eggplant) in my garden about 6 months of the year, if not more.

See it Simmer in the Pan

Here is the recipe:

BASIL EGGPLANT ( PUD MAKUA YOW)

1	tablespoon	vegetable oil
1	bunch	Thai basil, leaves picked from the stem
1	tablespoon	sugar
2	cloves	garlic, chopped
2	tablespoons	fish sauce
2		eggplants
2		chili peppers

Slice the eggplants into irregular shapes for easy turning in the pan. When it is sliced into a small disk, it tends to stick to the bottom of the pan and makes it difficult to flip or turn.

Chop garlic and slice chili peppers. Pick the leaves from the stem of the Thai basil.

Heat a pan or wok over high or medium high. Add oil, chili peppers and garlic. Stir until the garlic turn golden brown. Add eggplant and stir. Add a cup of water and cover the pan or wok with a lid. Keep the lid close until the eggplant is cooked. It should take about 5-7 minutes before the eggplant is done. The eggplant turns from white to translucent when it is done. Almost all of the water should have been evaporated at this point. If the eggplant is still not cooked, add a little bit more water and keep lid closed until the eggplant is ready. Add fish sauce and sugar and stir. Add Thai basil and quickly stir to heat the basil, so that it retains it color. Turn off heat immediately.

Serve hot with rice.

Don't the red peppers and bright green basil make it look pretty? It was EXTRAORDINARILY delicious, too.

Snow and Thai Green Eggplants and Purple Basil and Thai Chiles and Snow

Mostly Green Thai Eggplants, called Brinjals

IT IS SUPPOSED TO SNOW TONIGHT.

For the Non-Texan among you, this is REALLY UNHEARD OF. Texas is very, very large and it DOES regularly snow in North Texas, but I am in Central Texas where you plant citrus trees in the GROUND. Of course the snow will melt when it hits the ground, because it was 70˚ here 2 days ago; but STILL:  SNOW!

Strangely  (in my limited SNOW! experience anyway), there is not supposed to be a Freeze tonight. The low is supposed to be 35˚. So I don’t have to cover the garden tonight. Tomorrow night though: they are predicting 22˚, meaning, I will be spending hours covering the garden TOMORROW and putting a heater into the $25 greenhouse.

I did, however, run around and pick the few remaining nightshades. In this really lovely photo you see: Purple Basil, Green Thai Eggplants, Poblanos, Thai Chiles, 3 Tangerines, and a Meyer lemon. I didn’t realize I had so MANY Green eggplants! They have huge seeds and I won’t be planting them again, I have found them too hard to cook with compared to the Japanese ones. But now I have to try to cook SOMETHING out of them, because, look, they are so pretty and I have so MANY!

Thai Beef Salad

Thai Beef Salad, my dinner tonight, pictured with a wicked hot Thai pepper out of the garden

I love this, and it is a perfect way to prepare leftover sirloin, which is common in my house because I love grilled steak. (My other favorite way to use leftover steak is a steak sandwich with mayonnaise on squishy white bread. And potato chips.) Most of the ingredients are right in the Central Texas garden in fall and winter.

Chopped up hot pepper, onion, mint, sacred basil, cilantro, and cucumber

You will need:

Leftover grilled sirloin, rare (buy grass-fed if you can find it. It has TWICE the flavor of conventional, and more omerga-3 oils, and JUST DO AS I COMMAND!)

Lettuce

A sweet onion (a 1014 or a Bermuda or a few shallots)

10 strands (or more) of Cilantro

A fat sprig or two (or four) of Mint

Sacred Basil if available, one sprig (or 3)

A cucumber

A carrot

Fresh hot peppers (2) or ONE SMALL THAI pepper (!)

Pickled hot peppers if you don’t have fresh

One clove of garlic

Fish sauce (one or two teaspoons)

Lime or lemon or Meyer lemon (all the juice of one)

Tablespoon of sugar

Adding the sliced rare sirloin

This salad is fun to make because everything is cold, there is no rush and no worries about overcooking anything, you can just kind of zone out while you are chopping.

Thinly slice clove of garlic and fresh hot pepper. Then thinly slice roughly a quarter of the sweet onion (less if it is big) and the cucumber and toss all the chopped up things in a bowl. Add pickled hot pepper if your fresh pepper isn’t spicy.

(HAVE I MENTIONED THAT ONE SMALL THAI PEPPER IS ENOUGH TO MAKE IT VERY, VERY HOT?)

A bed of just-picked Red Oak Leaf and Buttercrunch lettuce

Put the carrot through the fine grater and add. Deleaf and chop up the cilantro, mint, and Thai basil and add. Slice up the leftover sirloin as thinly as you can without undue strain, and toss in the rest of the stuff. In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce. Pour over the salad and toss. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

Pad See Ew: A dish served with Thai Pickled Jalapenos

Pad See Ew with Pickled Red Jalapenos

“It’s hard to feel mysterious and romantic when you have been supping on Pork and Greens!”—–Anne of Green Gables, L.M Montgomery

Every culture has their own version of “Pork ‘n’ Greens”, but probably the BEST version is the Thai Dish Pad See Ew. Jam from Thai Fresh told me that, although Pad Thai is the most popular Thai dish in America, in Thailand the  dish that most Thai would identify as “The National Dish” is Pad See Ew. It is considered to be total comfort food, Mom-style cooking, although it is a street vendor favorite as well.

The ingredients for Pad See Eew are relatively few: Rice noodles, Chinese broccoli (or Kale), fresh pork, an egg, and garlic. Oh and Soy Sauce. I probably would never had tried making this dish at home, except for the Gardening Challenge:

“What am I going to do with all this ________?”

Last spring it was “All this Kale????” I myself am very fond of greens, I particularly love arugula and kale, oh but I also love Swiss Chard and Spinach. But I am the ONLY person in my house who likes them, so I have to eat ALL of them ALL BY MYSELF. Usually a garden of any size will produce enough greens to feed a family of 8, so using them up takes a lot of ingenuity. Pad See Ew is a GREAT dish for using up KALE.

(Of course, my kale plants at the present moment are a little over an inch tall, so I didn’t make it this time in order to use up Kale. In fact, I BOUGHT KALE AT THE STORE especially to make it, because I was craving it. Because it is SO DELICIOUS, the most POPULAR dish in all of Thailand !!!)

P*L*U*S, I noticed on the recipe that it is served with fresh pickled Chile Peppers (such as the Thai style fresh pickled jalapenos in my icebox right now) so this dish falls under the heading “What to do with pickled jalapenos”.

A NOTE: I find that when I am cooking Thai food, I use more meat and more sauce or curry paste than the recipes call for. So, consider this recipe rather flexible; you can really add more or less of anything and it will probably still be awesome. This recipe reflects the way I made it this evening.

PAD SEE EW

2 TBS oil

2 TB sugar

1 cup thinly sliced fresh raw pork (I use fresh ham steak from Peach Creek Farms.)

1/2 cup light Thai soy suace (you can buy this at Thai Fresh or  any Asian Market)

2-6 cloves of garlic. I myself like a lot of garlic!

several stems of cilantro if you’ve got it

Half a package of flat, wide dried rice noodles

1 egg

1 TBS dark soy sauce (tamari)

1 TBS white vinegar

A bunch of Kale, or you can be AUTHENTIC and use Chinese Broccoli. But don’t use regular broccoli, it’s flavor is not strong enough. To be Perfectly Wonderful, this dish must have that “Bitter Greens” flavor.

Use your biggest Le Creuset stockpot, or, a wok if you have one. I have given up on Woks and just use my Le Creuset anymore, I just seem to get better results.

1. Get out a big ceramic bowl, and put your dry noodles in it, and then run the hot water in your sink until it is coming out Burn-your-hand-hot, and fill the bowl with hot water. They should soak for about 45 minutes, they are ready when they are all floppy.  While they are soaking, you chop everything up. When cooking Asian, YOU REALLY HAVE TO do that Galloping Gourmet thing where you have everything all ready and chopped up before you turn the stove on.

Peel and mince your garlic (I do it the “SMASH” way) and also the cilantro if you have some. Chop up the Kale into pieces the size of which will fit easily on your fork when you are eating. Slice the raw pork into bite-size strips. Salt and pepper it while you are at it. Get an egg out of the icebox.

2. In a little dish, mix up the sugar, Thai soy sauce, Tamari, and the spoonful of Vinegar. Mix to dissolve the sugar.

Okay, ready to cook!

Drain the noodles.

Put the oil in the pot. When you think it might be hot, add the garlic and cilantro and stir a little. Add the Pork. When it looks about half done, add the Kale. It will start to turn bright green. Just keep stirring everything until the kale begins to wilt and get smaller. Grab your DRAINED noodles, and add them and really begin stirring so that the noodles cook too. Add the little bowl of sauce and sugar and STIR! When it seems like everything is cooked to your liking, clear aside a little empty area in the bottom of the pot, and crack the egg into it. Smash it up a little, that is, scramble it a little, and then toss everything around so that the egg can coat everything. It will be barely discernible, but it is important! To the Flavor of the Dish!

It is done!

Top with a few Thai pickled Jalapenos!

The version of Pad See Ew I made tonight was the BEST I HAVE EVER MADE!

Pad See Ew pictured with my jar of Fresh Pickled Jalapenos

Pickling Jalapenos

Can you see how big and crisp and fresh these are?

Last month I went to a VERY FANCY dinner, out under the sky at a place called Johnson’s Backyard Garden. It was an event called Outstanding In the Field, where I enjoyed a fabulous meal in wonderful company for free, that I meant to blog about. Sometimes people say to me “Do you ever RUN OUT of things to Blog About?” and It is SO not what is happening! I actually have such an ENORMOUS backlog of things to blog about, that I have HUNDREDS of photos of events and recipes and dishes that I never found the time to blog about in a TIMELY fashion, just sitting in my computer.

Once it is not TIMELY anymore, I feel embarrassed! I wish I got paid $50 a post or something, so that my innate GREED coupled with my DESIRE TO MAKE A LIVING would COMPEL me to write a post everyday, maybe even TWO a day. But if I ever want to get to that point, where I am getting PAID to share my fascinating thoughts, I have to write two posts a day for FREE for, I don’t know, a WHILE. RIght? So let’s get down to business:

"Outstanding In The Field" fancy outdoor dinner table

ANYWAY: While I was at this event, I got to talking to Mrs. Johnson, the wife of Farmer Johnson, and we discussed farming/gardening. And she said something along the lines of, right now we are sending our CSA customers a lot of jalapenos because everything else is either dead or still a seedling. I said in reply, “Oh, you have Jalapenos? Because my crop FAILED this year! I kept the plants alive through September, which is when they are really really prolific, but instead of getting a couple of grocery bags full of Jalapenos, I got ZIP!” And Mrs. Johnson, BLESS HER HEART, said, “Oh just come out here and pick some for free, you can have all you want.”

Because I am EXTREMELY FOND of the word “FREE” ( as I document here! ) I replied, ” Don’t say that unless you really mean it, because I WILL COME.”  And then, after getting over the Flu, I WENT!!

Johnson's Beautiful Crops and Soil

OH. MY. GOD. You should SEE the Johnsons’ farm. The soil, though only a few miles from my house, is entirely different (East Austin is where all the good topsoil is. I live in South Central Austin, and my topsoil alternates between gravel, clay and caliche, and is about 3 inches thick.) The Johnsons’ farm is in the Colorado river alluvial bed, and the topsoil is five feet deep and as dark and rich as chocolate cake. Their plants are all enormous and thriving, the jalapeno bushes were taller than me! THEIR FARM IS AMAZING!!!

Basket of fresh jalapenos being washed in the sink

I picked a basket full of red and green jalapenos in about half an hour. Next day, I pickled them. I usually make two different kinds of jalapeno pickles: Thai and Mexican. The Thai pickles are best as “fresh” pickles, that is to say, never cooked, just packed in Thai pickling solution raw and jammed into the fridge. But you can also pickle them to be shelf stable.

The Mexican Style pickled Jalapenos are pickled with bay leaf, garlic, carrots, and onion, and have a more savory flavor. The basket of peppers I picked made 12 pints of Mexican Jalapenos and 5 pints of Thai jalapenos. Here are the recipes:

Thai Jalapenos

Fill a large canning boiler with water and bring to a boil. Sterilize canning jars (I usually sterilize MORE than I will need, and I base my need on how much I have to put up. In this case, I sterilized 18 jars, and I thought I would need 14.)

Have new canning jar lids and bands that you bought at the store handy. Buy many, you will use them up eventually! I bought 24. In a large pitcher, mix together a quart of white vinegar and a quart of water. Add 4 cups of white sugar.

Then, sit at your table, and slice jalapenos into slices (include seeds) and pack them tightly into sterilized canning jars. When they are full, pour the vinegar, water, and sugar solution over them, leaving a half inch of headroom. (I didn’t do this on one jar and it EXPLODED in the canner. SO don’t forget to leave the headroom or your jars will explode.) Put on the lids and bands, submerge in the still hot water in the canner and boil for fifteen minutes. Remove from canner and let them cool. They are done!

Slicing

If you are only going to make yourself like ONE jar of pickled jalapanos, don’t bother to can them, just follow the instructions up to putting on the lid, and throw them into the icebox and use them right away.

Mexican Jalapenos

These are a little more involved, but so good! Do the jars as above. In addition to many jalapenos, you will need one or two bay leaves per jar, a bunch of carrots, an onion, and a head of garlic.

Peel the carrots and chop them into pieces roughly the size of a jalapeno.

Peel the onion the cut into chunks. Peel the garlic cloves.

Scout investigates the Mexican Style Jalapenos

Into each sterilized jar, put a bay leaf, a carrot, and a clove of garlic. Take the jalapenos, and pierce them with a paring knofe so that the brine will be able to enter their cavities. I usually kind of poke them once near the top and then cut the bottoms in half. pack as many jalapenos as you can into each jar, adding another piece of carrot and some onion chunks as well as peppers. Add another clove of garlic if you have extra. Pack full. Add a teaspoon of salt to each jar.

Mix a quart of white vinegar with a quart of water in a jug or pitcher. Pour over the peppers, and press them down to allow air to escape from the pepper cavities. Leave 1/2 inch of headroom on each jar. Put the lids on and seal them. Process for 15 minutes and then remove and allow to cool.

My Pal Gina who lives in San Francisco asked me: “What do you use pickles jalapenos FOR?” My Mind Broke. What food is NOT improved by the addition of jalapenos? So, I will be doing a series on WHAT TO DO WITH JALAPENOS!

Eighteen pints of pickled jalapenos! ENough to last until next summer and give away too.

Tipsy Thai

Jam Explains Thai Cooking Principles

The Tipsy Texan and Thai Fresh are getting together to offer cooking classes that combine Jam Sanichat’s amazing Thai appetizers with David Allan’s classic cocktails. The Blogitariat was invited last night to preview the class, and, as anticipated, it was the cat’s pajamas!

Corn Fritter Batter

The first class of this type is going to be offered next Wednesday (May 13th) and I really can’t recommend it enough! Not only because no one’s Thai cooking skillz can touch Jam’s, but also because  you are not going to get a better cocktail than from the Tipsy Texans. It is a Foodie’s Delite!!

David Allan

(Not surprisingly, both of these local maestros are going to be contributing to the prestigious Farm to Table Dinner tonight at the Barr Mansion. The dinner is SOLD OUT, which is wonderful, as all the proceeds go to the Sustainable Food Center.)

First David Allan demonstrated the correct way to make a Daquiri: fresh lime juice, white rum (he used our local Treaty Oak brand) and simple syrup. In fact, most of the cocktail demonstration was the (in my opinion) rather common-sensical stressing of the fact that one should make one’s cocktails out of REAL INGREDIENTS, rather than fake chemicals and mixes. But I live in a little Foodie Paradise where I wouldn’t dream of making anything out of chemicals and mixes; there are, in fact, many people who DO! Well, this class will show anyone who uses a chemical mix the error of their ways.

Mojito! This is a Mojito, not a Mint Julep!!

In the course of the lesson in mixology, we learned the Proper Way to make a Mint Julep, a Margharita, a Daquiri, and we previewed the cocktail Allen has created for the Barr Mansion event tonight. Of course, each cocktail was sampled, making for a very merry class!

About halfway through the cocktail lesson, Jam took us into her kitchen and we learned how to make the classic Thai appetizer Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce and Cucumber Salad. Although it is an appetizer with many nuances and seems terribly time-consuming and fancy, it really isn’t that hard, and can easily be made at home.

Thai Cucumber salad with Shallots, Jalapenos, and Red Peppers

Strawberry Margharitas made from Fresh muddled strawberries, lime juice, agave nectar and tequila

Jam also shared with us a recipe she developed for Corn Fritters, made in the manner of Thai Fish Balls (but vegetarian.) Oh My God!!  SO DELICIOUS!!!!!  Jam said that when she was developing the recipe, she made a plateful, and a customer asked to try one, and then bought the whole batch. I have no doubt at all this is true, because left to my own devices I might have eaten the whole platter. Wonderful texture, wonderful flavor.

The Fritters

Without a doubt, one of the finest cooking classes I have taken, and one I would pay to take again.