52 recipes. Page 1 of 3
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It began in 1940s Singapore, when M.J. Gomez, an immigrant from Kerala, put whole fish heads, which his Chinese customers loved, into a South Indian curry. Okra, eggplant and tomato cook along with the head in coconut milk and tamarind, and collagen from the head gives the gravy a slight stickiness. The first bites go to the cheeks and the soft parts around the eyes, which have soaked up the most curry.
Steamed eggplant, cooled and torn along the grain, comes apart in silky, slippery strands. They are dressed with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili flakes and kept cold, and the more dressing you use, the closer it gets to a chilled salad.
Rousui comes from the Katsuura area of Tokushima, and the word is said to be a local form of zosui, Japanese rice porridge. Whole sweetfish are laid over rice, potato and eggplant as they simmer, and their aroma goes into the broth. Once cooked, the fish move to a plate to be picked clean of even the fine bones before the flesh returns to the pot. Broken up in the pot, those bones would be hard to find.
The deodeok, a fibrous mountain root, goes into the pan ahead of the eggplant and onion, because eggplant cooks far faster. Its earthy bitterness is toned down beforehand with a short soak in salted water.
The batter is mixed with cold sparkling water instead of plain water, plus a little gochugaru. It gets only a light stir so the bubbles survive and is used right away, and the eggplant is salted ahead to draw out water. Once fried, the eggplant inside turns creamy.
Charring whole eggplant over an open flame until the skin turns completely black is what puts the smoke into this Punjabi mash. The flesh is mashed only roughly with a fork, so small pieces stay visible instead of becoming a smooth puree. Watery bharta usually comes from tomato that was not cooked down; the onion and tomato base should already be a dense paste before the eggplant is added.
Crosshatched purple eggplant skin looks like a turtle's shell, and ground sesame clouding the broth looks like mud, hence the name mud turtle soup. This summer soup from the Koto region of Shiga gets slight body from finely ground rice porridge, which also keeps the large amount of toasted sesame from sinking straight to the bottom.
Eggplant cut into 7 mm rounds steams in its own moisture while the egg coating sets, and the inside turns soft as custard. At Chuseok many families fry these alongside zucchini jeon for the ancestral table.
There is no meat, just eggplant, tofu and perilla seed powder, but the broth is anchovy-kelp stock; for a vegetarian pot, change the stock first. The eggplant simmers for about six minutes until soft enough to collapse, while the tofu, cut small at 1.5 cm, stays firm.
No meat goes into this braise, only eggplant and tofu sold for pan-frying; the eggplant drinks up the soy and chili sauce and turns silky, while the tofu, browned first, keeps its shape around it.
Thin slices of cucumber, eggplant, lotus root and carrot share the bowl with chewy wood ear mushroom, shiso and ginger, and each bite lands somewhere different on the crunch scale. Each vegetable is prepped on its own terms: the hard lotus root and carrot get a short blanch, while the softer cucumber and eggplant are rubbed with salt instead. The sweet vinegar with sliced red chili is boiled once and then cooled all the way down. Poured on while still warm, it costs the cucumber and lotus root their snap. Squeezing the salted cucumber and eggplant hard after rinsing keeps the dressing from going watery. Half an hour in the fridge is enough before serving it cold with its liquid.
In Kagawa, fresh udon goes straight into the loach and miso soup, so it eats as both soup and a bowl of noodles, with burdock, eggplant, taro and fried tofu in the pot too. The loach is never self-caught: only farmed fish that a licensed supplier has professionally purged.
Each lasagna sheet is spread with filling and rolled up rather than stacked, and the rolls come out of the oven as neat single portions. The eggplant is roasted first to drive off moisture that would otherwise thin the ricotta, then split between the filling and the top, while a tomato sauce seasoned with gochujang gives the mild cheese some heat.
Pomegranate seeds burst with tart juice between soft slices of roasted eggplant. Salted first to draw out surface water, the eggplant browns at the edges in the oven instead of steaming.
Decide whether to serve the caponata at room temperature or chilled, and allow for an overnight rest if you want a softer sweet-sour balance. When browning the eggplant, the cubes should color without collapsing before they return to the sauce. Vinegar or sugar that dominates can obscure the eggplant, so their balance matters as much as the browning. Toasted bread, grilled meat, and fish are serving options already suited to this dish.
The eggplant is cut into big cubes and browned on its cut faces before it goes anywhere near the coconut milk curry sauce. Raw eggplant would drink up oil and liquid and go limp; seared first, the cubes keep their corners after simmering and taste toasty where they hit the pan.
The steamed eggplant is torn by hand rather than cut, because the ragged strands hold the soy sauce and sesame oil better than a clean knife edge. Once dressed it turns dark and glossy, and on warm rice it all but melts.
Eggplant and ground pork are stir-fried in green onion oil, then piled, oil and all, on top of the soaked rice, so the eggplant cooks with the rice while soaking up the pork fat and onion aroma. Cut it thick, about 1.5 cm, and pull it off the heat before it goes limp, or it collapses once the rice is done. Soy sauce splashed onto the hot edge of the pan adds a slightly smoky note.
Thick 1 cm half-moons of eggplant get a seared face before they are turned, so the pieces hold their shape and only the centers go soft, unlike limp versions of this banchan. Stirring too early stops the browning, and stirring too long makes the slices collapse.
Halved and scored in a grid, the eggplant cooks cut side down under a lid, and the trapped steam turns the inside creamy while the skin keeps a little bite. The soy and garlic sauce is spooned into the cuts while the eggplant is still hot.
Eggplant is steamed for just five minutes, torn along the grain and tossed with soup soy sauce and garlic so it takes on seasoning of its own. It then goes into cold water seasoned with vinegar and sugar and is topped with cheongyang chili and sesame seeds, a summer side dish. If ice is going in, the seasoning should be a little stronger, since it thins as the ice melts.
The eggplant is salted and blotted dry, and the ground pork is cooked first with onion and garlic, then cooled before it goes into the batter. Because the meat is never raw in the pan, even thick rounds cook evenly to the center, and the softened eggplant stays moist between bits of pork.
Eggplant cut into wide bias slices drinks up the gochujang broth and releases a mouthful of spicy liquid with each bite. The chili paste and flakes need only about 30 seconds over low heat and scorch if left longer.
There is no salting the eggplant to draw out water. It softens on its own under the lid, in the same pot as browned pork shoulder, and picks up the rendered fat along with the soy and chili, which makes it far richer than eggplant braised alone.