Posted on

Aubergines with den miso

Years ago, before I’d even met Dr W, I had a boyfriend whose sister-in-law was Japanese. She and I didn’t agree on much, but we did agree that these aubergines (which she made every time I visited her house) are pretty sublime.

Takako used to make this using those lovely wee Japanese aubergines – the sort that leave you gasping with their visual similarity to eggs and explain the whole eggplant nomenclature thing (not obvious when you are 18 and the only eggplants you have ever met are purple and shaped like a torpedo). Happily for those of us without a supplier of dear little Japanese aubergines, this works very well with the purple sort too. Aubergines are a wonderfully meaty sort of vegetable. Although this works really well as an accompaniment, this lovely meatiness means that you can happily serve this dish as the main event, with rice and perhaps a salad dressed with some rice vinegar. It’s also a good win if you have an unexpected visiting veggie, and, being one of those things you serve at room temperature, I think it’s really, really good as part of a picnic. These do soak up quite a lot of oil, as is common with aubergines, but hell – it’s not like you’re making this dish every day. To serve two, you’ll need:

2 medium aubergines
200g shiromiso (white miso)
2 tablespoons sake (Chinese rice wine is good here if you have no sake)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons mirin
6 tablespoons ground nut oil

As usual, if you’re having trouble finding white miso, head for a large independent health food shop. They tend to have a bewilderingly good selection of miso, seaweeds, pickled ginger and the like. I have no idea why, given that most of the other nutty, protein-knitted, fermenty things masquerading as food that the health food shop I use sells are things I have no interest in ingesting at all. Boo hippies.

Start by slicing the aubergines into three lengthways. Slash the cut surfaces diagonally, without cutting all the way through the flesh, and without cutting the skin. Fry in the hot oil over a medium heat, turning halfway through, until the skin and flesh is golden brown, and the aubergine is soft.

While the aubergine slices are frying, make the den miso by combining the mirin, sugar, sake and miso in a small frying pan and bringing to a very gentle simmer, stirring all the time. Cook the sauce for two minutes and keep warm until the aubergines are cooked.

Move the cooked aubergines to a plate and smear the hot den miso all over their upper surface, making sure the paste gets into the slashes. Leave the slices to come down to room temperature before serving – for some reason, this dish is all the more delicious when it’s cold.

Posted on

Imam Bayaldi

Imam BayaldiI’m writing about Imam Bayaldi, a favourite middle-eastern aubergine dish (it means ‘the imam fainted’), specifically in order that my friend Martin, who has a vegetarian to entertain, has something new to cook. Sorry Martin – I’ve been meaning to get round to this for ages. I guess I just like meat.

It’s odd how many dishes from places all over the world have names like this, where religious men are felled by dinner. There’s Buddha Jumps over the Wall soup (a Chinese soup so good, apparently, that even the Buddha was driven to interrupt his meditation with worldly gymnastics – I wouldn’t know, because it’s so expensive I can’t bring myself to order it). There’s Strozzapreti, an Italian pasta which translates as ‘strangled priests’, apparently because they are so good a venal priest choked himself to death when gorging on them. The imam in the case of Imam Bayaldi has, at least, only been driven to unconsciousness rather than unseemly jumping or choking, so I suppose he wins.

There’s a lot of olive oil in this recipe. Aubergines are notorious for soaking oil and flavourings up; it’s what makes them so delicious. If you’re feeling bad about your waistline, go for a jog tomorrow. Life’s too short to avoid aubergines.

To make two stuffed aubergines you’ll need:

2 aubergines
1 red onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 celery heart, chopped finely (make sure you get the yellow/green leaves here)
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 small handful fresh oregano
1 small handful fresh mint
1 shall handful fresh parsley (plus extra to garnish)
250ml chicken stock (substitute vegetable stock if serving to vegetarians)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

AubergineBegin by slicing the aubergines in half lengthways and use a knife to carefully hollow them out, making them into boat shapes. Chop the flesh you’ve removed into 1cm squares, and put it in a large covered bowl. Use a serrated knife (like a tomato, the aubergine has a tough skin and soft flesh, so it’s easier to cut with a serrated knife) to remove long strips of skin from the outside of the boats (see picture). This will help the aubergines’ flesh take on flavour evenly from the stock and olive oil. Try as hard as you can to avoid puncturing all the way through to the inside of the hollowed out shells, but don’t worry; it’s not the end of the world if you do.

Imam Bayaldi fillingChop the onion, celery, tomatoes and the green pepper into pieces about the same size as the aubergine pieces you chopped earlier. Mix these with the aubergine flesh, the garlic and the herbs (apart from the bay leaves), a few twists of the pepper grinder and a teaspoon of salt. If you can find some flat-leaved parsley (which does have a subtly different flavour), use that – you can see from the pictures that all I had in the garden was curly-leaved parsley. Add three tablespoons of olive oil to the bowl and mix well.

Place the aubergine shells in a baking tin with reasonably high sides. Fill the aubergines with the mixture in the bowl, and tuck the bay leaves between them. Drizzle with some extra oil so the edges of the aubergines are well-lubricated, then pour the chicken stock into the bottom of the dish so it laps around the sides of the aubergines. Pour another five tablespoons of olive oil into the dish with the chicken stock.

Bake the aubergines, covered with some aluminium foil, for 45 minutes at 180°C (350°F), until they are soft. Remove from the dish and discard any remaining stock and oil in the pan. Serve immediately – the couscous from yesterday’s post is a fantastic accompaniment (and, like this dish, can be made vegetarian by swapping the chicken stock for some vegetable stock). You can avoid aubergines which (as in the photograph at the top of the page) look like a chia pet by the simple expedient of not garnishing them with way too much curly parsley. I blame the very large glass of retsina I was drinking at the time.

Posted on

Aubergine caviar

This eggplant caviar recipe is a great way to squeeze every ounce of flavour out of an aubergine. It’s extremely easy to make if you have a food processor (and only a little more difficult if you don’t; I used to make it when I was a student using a large knife to chop everything very finely instead). Although the amount of garlic in this recipe looks a bit alarming, the garlic in the finished dip is roasted, so it’s very mellow and sweet. You won’t find it overpowering.

Traditionally called ‘caviar’ or ‘poor man’s caviar’, this is not at all fishy, nor very similar to caviar. I think it got the name from the days when aubergines were much seedier; those seeds have a lovely texture a little (if you are imagining hard) like fish roe. Today, aubergines are usually propagated without the seeds, which many people do not enjoy.

This is a particularly good accompaniment for lamb, and it’s really, really good with yesterday’s kofta kebab. The roast aubergine has a wonderful natural sweetness, brought out by the raw parsley, which seems made to be paired with hot lamb. Try it some time.

To serve four as a mezze you’ll need:

2 large purple aubergines (eggplants)
10 fat cloves garlic
1 large bunch parsley
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Cut both aubergines in half lengthways. Don’t bother salting and disgorging it – the same growing techniques which have made modern aubergines near-seedless have also made sure they aren’t bitter. Peel the garlic, lay the whole cloves on the cut side of the aubergines, and wrap each aubergine half with its garlic tightly in tin foil. Bake on a sheet at 180° C for 45 minutes, until the garlic and aubergines are very soft.

Peel the skin from the aubergines and discard it. Use a food processor or very sharp knife to finely mince the garlic, aubergine flesh and parsley. Stir in the olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve at room temperature.

Aubergine caviar will keep in the fridge for a few days. Try it on its own on toast for a quick lunch.

Posted on

Parmigiana di Melanzane

This is probably Dr Weasel’s favourite supper dish. Parmigiana di melanzane is a layered, baked dish of aubergines (eggplants for all the Americans out there), rich tomato sauce, parmesan and mozzarella. It’s a wonderfully savoury meal to brighten up an autumn evening.

This tomato sauce, simmered for ages until thick and unctuous, is unbelievably good – it’s also very simple, containing very few ingredients. It freezes well, so if you can face seeding and peeling even more tomatoes, make some extra and save it for the sort of snowy day when you need to eat something red. Try it with pasta, or over meatballs.

To serve four with some left over for lunch you’ll need:

2kg ripe tomatoes
4 medium aubergines
3 large onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 handful fresh basil
1 handful fresh oregano
1 mild red chilli
1 ½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 large knob butter, plus extra to taste
250 g mozzarella
Salt and pepper
Grated parmesan
Olive oil to fry

Begin by peeling and seeding the tomatoes. (Cut a shallow cross at the bottom of the tomatoes and pour over boiling water. Fish the tomatoes straight out of the water, which will have loosened their skin, and peel it off. Cut open and discard the seeds.) Cut into small dice.

Dice the onions and chop the garlic finely, and fry in a large knob of butter until translucent and fragrant. Add the tomatoes and finely chopped chilli to the saucepan and stir to combine everything. Bring to a very low simmer, and reduce (this will take more than an hour) to half its original volume or a little less. Bring the vinegar and sugar to the boil in a small pan and stir it into the sauce. Add the oregano and season with salt and pepper. Taste to check whether you need more salt or sugar. Add another knob of butter for a more mellow flavour if you like. Set the finished sauce aside.

While the sauce is reducing, prepare the aubergine. Slice it into rounds about 1 cm thick (salt to remove the juices if you like; with modern aubergines the bitter juices have been bred out, and you’ll probably find you don’t need to salt at all) and fry each round in very hot olive oil (the aubergine slices are like little sponges, so you’ll need plenty), until brown on each side. Drain on kitchen paper and season with salt and pepper.

Set out a layer of aubergine slices in the bottom of a baking dish. Place some basil leaves on top. Pour over a layer of sauce, layer over some mozzarella, then more aubergine, more basil, more sauce and so on. When you’ve used everything up, sprinkle over the parmesan and bake for 45 minutes at 180° C, until brown on top. Scatter over some fresh basil.

Serve with crusty bread to mop up the rich juices.

Posted on

Caponata Siciliana

When I lived in London, I worked a few doors away from Antonio Carluccio’s Covent Garden delicatessen and restaurant. Between that delicatessen and the MAC cosmetics shop, I usually managed to relieve myself of most of my salary by the end of the month with astonishing ease. It is depressing to realise that all you’ve got to show for having edited half a book is four tubes of pink-coloured whale fat, a pot of something sparkly, a small bag of pine nuts and a stomach full of aubergines that somebody else has cooked.

Happy day. I now live in a house which is essentially in the middle of a field, four miles from the nearest shop. I work from home these days, being a freelance, so I’m not tempted to don wellies and hike out to the shops in my lunch hour. This means that I make my own caponata and get to spend more on sparkly things at the weekends.

Caponata is a Sicilian vegetable dish, and it’s brilliantly flexible; you can use it as a side dish, a salad, a kind of saucy base for cooked meat; it is good hot, cold from the fridge or (my favourite) at room temperature. It’s typical of Sicily in its Arab-influenced agrodolce, or sour/sweet flavouring, and is spiked with savoury olives, capers and pine nuts.

This is very similar to the caponata from Carluccio’s (which they used to serve in a gorgeously oily foccacia sandwich with a slice of Fontina cheese). It’s another good recipe for those with a glut of tomatoes – I used a sugo (tomato puree) I’d cooked and bottled last year. Those without their own can buy good sugo at an Italian delicatessen (I recommend Balzano’s in Cambridge for locals) – Sainsbury’s also carry a good, own-brand Italian sugo for a short period every summer. To make your own, just simmer whole tomatoes in a pan with a little butter, salt and sugar (no water) until the skins are bursting, then strain the lot through a sieve.

To make a large bowl of Caponata, sufficient for a side-dish for six, you’ll need:

4 large aubergines (eggplants)
2 large onions
Inner leaves and stalks of a large celery plant
400g Sugo (see above)
1 small handful salted nonpareil capers, rinsed well
1 small handful chopped black olives (stoned)
1 large handful pine nuts
1 large handful basil, plus more to garnish
Nutmeg
1 tablespoon caster sugar
60ml sherry vinegar (use white wine vinegar if you can’t get sherry)
Salt, pepper
Olive oil

Chop the aubergines into even dice. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large, thick-bottomed pan until it starts to give off its fragrance and tip the aubergines in. Fry, keeping everything on the move, until the aubergines are soft and turning brown. Remove them to a bowl.

Dice the onions roughly and fry them in some more oil in the same pan until soft. Add the chopped celery heart and stalks, the pine nuts, capers, olives and sugo, and stir until the celery is tender – about five minutes. (Make sure you don’t add too much sugo; this should be moist, not wet.) Add the cooked aubergines and shredded basil to the pan and cook, stirring gently, for another ten minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar, cook for another five minutes to take the edge off the vinegar, and season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Serve immediately or leave to cool. Mine is currently on the kitchen table, cooling for Fontina sandwiches later this evening. My stomach is growling.

Posted on

Spices and niceness

I don’t know how authentic any of the Moroccan food I’ve eaten is. Certainly, none of it has been consumed in Morocco – I’ve eaten in plenty of cous-cous restaurants in France, though. There’s an undercurrent of very particular, seductive spicing that runs through all of the tagines and cous-cous dishes I’ve had there.

That undercurrent is Ras al-Hanout, which is Moroccan for Top of the Shop. It’s a blend of spices which varies from maker to maker, but which usually contains about twenty different ingredients, including nutmeg, lavender, nigella, cardamom and other good things. A pre-blended Ras al-Hanout is available in the UK from Seasoned Pioneers (Sainsbury’s carry their dear little foil packets in its exotic foods aisle), and it’s extremely good; the list of ingredients on the packet includes lavender buds and the rose petals you can see in the picture.

I’ve got some friends coming round for dinner, and they love complex, spicy foods. I rub the Ras al-Hanout (with some extra coriander, cumin and nutmeg which I’ve ground in the mortar and pestle) into some lamb neck fillets, brown them, add some diced aubergine, garlic and tomatoes.

If they want spicy, they’re going to get spicy. I’ve got my hands on some Scotch Bonnet chili peppers, which are among the hottest chilis you can buy in the UK. (They get 100,000 – 350,000 points on the Scoville scale; this is obscenely hot.)

I’m not going to slice one of these chaps open, because it’ll kill everybody who tries to eat my lamb. I drop one, whole, in with the tomatoes; it should infuse the dish with its heat in a more gentle way than it would have if I’d cut it open and unleashed its seeds. Much of the heat of a chili pepper is in its seeds and in the white ribs which support them inside the fruit. These are delicious little peppers, but they need treating with a great deal of respect if you don’t want chemical burns.

While the lamb simmers, I roast some Borretane onions, which Sainsburys are doing at the moment in their Taste the Difference range. These are tiny little onions, about the size of a ping-pong ball, which roast to a beautiful, caramel sweetness. I put them in an enamelled, cast-iron baking dish, tuck thyme, oregano and bay leaves from the garden in among them (I nearly tuck in a nicely washed snail, too, but that’s another story), and slather them with literally heart-stopping quantities of butter and fat from a duck I roasted a couple of weeks ago. (This is not Moroccan. This is just tasty.)

After an hour at 180c, the onions are sizzling in their papery skins, ready to be popped out and smeared on some bread, along with their buttery juices. The aubergine and tomato have melted into a spiced sauce for the lamb, which is tender and fragrant (and not very photogenic).