Glue and Glitter » eggplant

Thai Basil Eggplant

Becky Striepe — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:00:37 +0000

So, we get our Vegetable Husband delivery on Wednesday evening. There’s been a variety eggplant in the basket every week for quite some time, and this week was no different. I’ve been getting to play a lot with different eggplant recipes!

You can imagine my delight when the very day after our veggies got here last week, my pal Jes over at Cupcake Punk posted this awesome recipe for Thai Basil Eggplant! Not only was this a fun new eggplant recipe, it was quick, easy and it used basically all ingredients from our VegHub basket! I did make a few substitutions, just to use what I had on hand rather than hit the market.

Here are my substitutions:

Instead of soaked rice noodles, I used cooked soba noodles
Shallot in place of the onion
VegHub’s eggplants weren’t the skinny Asian sort, so I just used one regular eggplant
We didn’t get purple bell peppers, but we did get small green ones. I bet purple would have been beautiful!
3 plum tomatoes instead of 1 large tomato
The basil I used was half regular from last week and half Thai basil from this week’s deliver
1/4c shoyu + 1T mushroom soy sauce instead of the 2 soy sauces listed. We only had about 1T of the mushroom sort left, sadly
2T mirin in place of the sugar
1t Better Than Bouillon paste rather than veg broth powder

I know, it sounds like a lot of changes, but I think the spirit of the recipe is pretty much the same. It came out deliciously! Even Dave, who isn’t crazy about eggplant, had a bowl for dinner! If you want to check out Jes’ recipe, head on over to Cupcake Punk!

© Becky for Glue and Glitter, 2009. | Permalink | One comment
Post tags: dinner, easy, eggplant, Food, vegan, veganmofo 2009

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Cooking for the Week

Becky Striepe — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:19:39 +0000

I’m sure I’ve talked about cooking for the week over here before. It’s my best defense against ordering Green Sprout after a long day, and it’s something I look forward to on the weekend. On Saturday or Sunday, I just love spending a few hours making a couple of batches of food that I can use to pack lunches and heat up quick dinners for the week. Usually, it’s one or two dishes, and I was really happy with the dishes I made this week!

Pictured up there is Mujadarra, a lentil and rice dish packed full of awesome fried onions and diced eggplant and green pepper sauteed with garlic, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. I didn’t have the five onions that the Mujadarra recipe I used was asking for, so I just used the two that I had on hand. It was delicious! I will say that I had to cook my lentils and rice for an additional 15 minutes or so and add a bit of water. It was great topped with soy yogurt and a little hot sauce!

The Mujadarra has been great this week. It’s lovely on its own, packed in my lunch as a cold salad (like in the picture to the right), and it’s versatile, too! For dinners, I’ve been mixing in a bit of cauliflower or broccoli slaw, microwaving long enough to heat everything up, and topping with a little olive oil and nutritional yeast. Since this isn’t heavy on the lentils, it takes well to the cheesiness and tastes like a whole different dish. Perfect!

Vegetable Husband was rich with eggplant this week, so I made one last dish using more of the eggplant. I’d been wanting to make my own baba ganouj for a while and finally got around to it this weekend! I sort of mixed things up based on this baba ganouj recipe from Epicurious. We didn’t have any tahini or lemons, so I changed things up a bit:

Approximate Baba Ganouj

4 small eggplants, halved lengthwise
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup sunflower seed butter (any nut butter would do here)
2 garlic cloves

Preheat oven to 375°F. Generously oil rimmed baking sheet. Place eggplant halves, cut side down, on sheet. Roast until eggplant is very soft, about 45 minutes. Cool slightly. Using spoon, scoop out pulp from eggplant into strainer set over bowl. Let stand 30 minutes, allowing excess liquid to drain from eggplant.

Toss the garlic into your Magic Bullet or food processor to chop, then add the rest of the ingredients and whizz until smooth!

I’ve been using this as a sandwich spread. It’s great on nutty whole grain bread topped with arugula!

© Becky for Glue and Glitter, 2009. | Permalink | Comment
Post tags: baba ganouj, eggplant, lentils and rice, Mujadarra, vegan

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Tofu and Eggplant Tikka Masala

Becky Striepe — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:00:41 +0000

Ever since my friend Nick made us tofu tikka masala skewers, I’ve been sort of obsessed. Luckily, the Dekalb Farmers Market carries tikka masala curry paste! Hurrah! The dish I made is….probably not very authentic. What it is, though, is very delicious! Hurrah!

1/2c plain soy yogurt
2-3T tikka masala curry paste (to taste)
1 block of tofu, cut into 1″ cubes
2T sesame oil
1 small eggplant, diced
1/2 vidalia onion, chopped

Stir the tikka masala paste into the yogurt, then add the tofu. Toss gently to coat. Set this aside to marinate.

In a pot or dutch oven, heat the sesame oil, then add the eggplant and onion. Sautee until the eggplant begins to soften – just a few minutes.

Add the tofu mixture to the pot and simmer, sitting frequently, for 10 minutes.

Serve over steamed rice.

© Becky for Glue and Glitter, 2009. | Permalink | One comment
Post tags: eggplant, Food, Indian food, tikka masla, tofu, vegan

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Eggplant and Peanut Stew

Becky Striepe — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:00:47 +0000

My friend Bonnie sent me a recipe for eggplant stew, and it reminded me that I’d been wanting to try a spin on this West African eggplant stew that I’d seen in a few places. The first place I ran across this recipe was years ago in Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook, but I somehow never got around to making it. This week’s Vegetable Husband delivery had so many of the ingredients, though, it was totally time! Most of the recipes called for some things I didn’t have, so the recipe below is adapted from this one at Bajan Scent.

Eggplant and Peanut Stew

1 c diced onion
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 T sesame oil

3 c eggplant, diced
2 c tomatoes (any sort will do!), chopped
2 potatoes, diced

1 t ginger powder
pinch of cayenne pepper
handful of fresh basil, chopped
1 c veggie broth

1c okra, chopped
1/4 c peanut butter
1 t salt
2T maple syrup (you can use any sweetener you like, really, but maple syrup is so good!)

Saute the onions and garlic until the onion turns translucent. Add the eggplant, tomato, and potato. Reduce your heat to medium, cover your pot, and let everything cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the ginger, cayenne pepper, basil, and broth. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 5 more minutes, until the potatoes are cooked through.

Add the okra, peanut butter, salt, and maple syrup. Stir to dissolve the peanut butter, and cook for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

© Becky for Glue and Glitter, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments
Post tags: cooking, eggplant, Food, peanutbutter, stew, tomato, vegan

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Kitchen Sink Fried Rice

Becky Striepe — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:00:31 +0000

It’s been a week of easy eats at our house! Tonight, I decided to cook up another fave: fried rice! This is one of my go-to meals when I want something fast and easy and have a bunch of produce around. You can pretty much put anything into fried rice and come out a winner.

I totally recommend the combo of veggies below, but you can also sub out pretty much whatever is in your kitchen. Just put the denser stuff in during round one and toss in lighter, leafier things in round two of frying.

1T hot sesame oil
2T olive oil
1 eggplant, diced
1 block tofu, cubed
one young vidalia onion, green and white parts, diced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1t ginger, minced

2c cooked rice (I used brown, since we had some all made up in the fridge already)
8 collard leaves, sliced into bite sized pieces
1T mushroom (or your favorite) soy sauce
2T sake
2T peanut sauce

Round One: Heat the oils in a wok or a large frying pan on medium, and toss in the eggplant, tofu, white parts of the onion, garlic, and ginger. Sautee everything until the eggplant softens.

Round Two: Toss in the rest of the ingredients and cook for a few minutes more, until the collards turn a lovely bright green.

Serve! Maybe with some of that sake to go with?

© Becky for Glue and Glitter, 2009. | Permalink | Comment
Post tags: collards, easy, eggplant, Food, fried rice, sake, vegan

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Glue and Glitter » eggplant

Thai Basil Eggplant

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