Will the Eggplant Excitement Never Stop?! or, Indian Potato and Brinjal Curry

Cubed potato, quartered Brinjals, and finely diced tomato all await MY PLEASURE

One of the first cookbooks I ever owned (in fact it might be THE first one I ever owned, that wasn’t really my Mom’s) is a book called A FAMILY HARVEST, that I bought (I believe) at a St-Lukes-On-the-Lake book sale when I was in High School. It is so totally old and out-of-print that nothing even comes up on Google for it; I could find it on my bookcase right now except I WOULD HAVE TO STAND UP.

In A FAMILY HARVEST, one of the dishes is a curry, the kind of curry made by British people in the 1880′s, then passed down in an American’s family for a few generations. I never made the dish, and who knows? it might have been good. But the thing that interested me about the recipe is that the curry is supposed to be accompanied by something called “boys” (not cooked young male humans though) which sound like a bunch of different condiments and dried fruits, and one of the “boys” is chopped up hard-boiled eggs.

The author writes about this curry as though everybody’s family eats Curry with Boys, like it is a perfectly normal thing on the family menu. It is a really nice cookbook.

Fresh cilantro, picked before COVERING THE GARDEN again

So, tonight, as I was contemplating what kind of Eggplant dish I should make with the NEXT ten Brinjals (is that even the right word?), I ran across a recipe that showed an Indian eggplant and potato curry served up with a hard-boiled egg!! Like in the Cookbook!

Sauteeing onions, mustard seed and cumin seed in coconut oil.

So I made it. First of all, it came out G*R*E*A*T and I highly recommend this curry to anyone who would like to try it. Because it is someone else’s recipe, I think the thing to do is to LINK to the website I found the recipe on, and drive traffic there. HERE is the recipe (and the photo with the egg.)

I didn’t have all the ingredients, so instead of using coconut powder, I used coconut milk; instead of using garlic ginger cilantro paste, I used fresh ginger and cilantro. What else? Oh, I used prepared red curry paste instead of red chile powder.

I used my coffee grinder to grind the poppyseeds. It was interesting, it made a kind of seed paste, like a black peanut butter. I learned in MARTHA STEWARTS COOKIE BOOK, that poppyseeds are very fast to go stale and taste rancid, so always buy small amounts when you are planning to use poppyseeds, and then use them all up.

My Dinner, served with a Hard-Boiled Egg. Then I ate a bowl of Waxed Gourds.

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!