Arugula salad with warm, crispy eggplant (AKA Rocket salad with crispy, BTU-enhanced aubergine)

My Parisian aunt taught me this way of cooking eggplant when I was naught but a lad, beginning a relationship with this most nicotine-enriched of edible plants that has sustained me for all these many years.

One of the best things about this dish was how the eggplant's warm, crispy, and sweet balanced the arugula's cold, crunchy, and bitter.

How I did it (if I did in fact do it):

First, I just made a plain arugula salad: washed baby arugula, tossed with dressing made from about one part balsamic vinegar, three parts olive oil, mixed with a fork. I also added some cheese (that farmer's market cheese has carried me a long way).

Second, I sliced the eggplant into discs and fried on low heat with olive oil:

It took some maneuvering to get them all evenly oiled and cooked. Eggplant is extremely good at soaking up oil, but as it cooks it will release some of the oil again, so it's easy to think you haven't added enough, and then end up with way too much. I actually pressed some of the slices that didn't get much oil against some of the ones that had too much, and that helped even things out a little. 

Then I just kept frying them on low heat until they were crispy on one side -- maybe 15 minutes. When that was done I turned them over to fry on the other side a little bit, and sprinkled some salt and lemon juice on top.

Sweet potato leaves and red cupboard barley

This dinner wasn't actually very delicious, but it looks pretty!

The untoothsomeness mostly was because I didn't know how to properly cook the red barley-like grains I found in the cupboard. I put them in the rice cooker, and even with extra water they were hard, chewy, and just not very toothsome. In fact, those things are like some kind of flavor black hole. You can add all the spices you want, but they will all undergo gravitational redshift as they approach the event horizon.

The other thing on top is yam leaves / sweet potato leaves / 番薯葉. I had heard tell of them but I don't think I had ever actually seen some in person -- until farmer's market last weekend, that is.

I wasn't sure what to do with them, so I just stir-fried them with oil, salt, and garlic. The result was very good: like spinach but with more texture.

Before frying, I tore all the leaves off the stems, which were thick and woody, and didn't seem edible. Someone please correct me if they are!

According to Wikipedia, another popular way to eat the leaves is to boil them briefly and then dip them in soy sauce.

Rigatoni Hasegawa

I know, pasta again. Listen. That other half can of crushed tomato, half bag of baby arugula, leftover section of field roast, and partial block of aged goat cheese -- drying and hardening in its wax paper bag in the fridge -- weren't going to eat themselves. At least, based on my observations over the past week, they weren't.

Now don't get the wrong idea. I didn't make this just because I felt sorry for the ingredients. This isn't a pity pasta. No, it has many delights in store for the casual eater.

1. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a heated pan. Put in chili flakes and 2-3 cloves of garlic.

2. Before the garlic gets too brown, add the tomato sauce and a pinch of salt.

3. Add the shishito pepper, sliced long, and the field roast, cubed, as shown.

4. Simmer for 10 or 15 minutes, adding splashes of water as needed. 

5. Compulsively check the rigatoni. When it's within edible range, for i = 30 until i < 1, say the value of i out loud and then decrement i. Drain the rigatoni.

6. Chop 5 or 6 shiso leaves and add to the sauce. (it's an experiment!)

7. Stir the sauce for a few seconds, then pour it over the pasta.

8. Take a handful of arugula that you cleverly washed beforehand, and put on top like so:

9. Sprinkle some cheese on top of that, preferably the aged goat cheese that you bought at the farmer's market a week ago and that now looks and feels like parmesan.

I think the shiso was a success. Next time I make tomato sauce, if I have some shiso withering in the back of the fridge, I'll add even more. It sort of fills the role of basil, but it's more interesting and pungent.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have another shiso hemp milk cordial.

Sweet, sour, spicy, fragrant eggplant

Here's what I did with the other eggplant:

It's basically 魚香茄子, "fish-fragrant eggplant", a really common eggplant dish in China that has no fish in it whatsoever.

Here's how I made it, told in the imperative voice.

1. Slice an eggplant (the long, magenta kind is best) into thin pieces as shown. Fry them with a little bit of vegetable oil (for Chinese food I always use oil that can take high-ish heat, usually safflower oil or grapeseed oil). Fry the eggplant until it starts to lose its water and look well-roasted (no bags under the eyes). 

2. Take the eggplant out of the pan, clean it if you have stuff stuck to the bottom.

3. Add more oil, chili flakes, and diced ginger (about a thumb). Stir for about 30 seconds, then add diced garlic (2 or 3 cloves). 

4. Add the eggplant again, and some fresh chopped red chili peppers (optional).

5. Before you did all that (I know, sorry), you should have prepared the sauce. Mix about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of black vinegar, 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of white sugar (I'm just making these numbers up). 

6. Stir fry for a while, and when everything looks well-cooked and the flavors are all mixed together, add the sauce. Boosh!

7. When the sauce is well mixed-in, it might start to smoke a little bit. This isn't bad, but don't let it smoke too much or it means the sauce is burning (I think) and the flavor will change. Quick, go to step 8!

8. Add about half a cup of water, into which you already mixed a tablespoon or two of corn starch (or other starch). As you stir, you'll notice the sauce getting thicker because of the starch. From this point on, you want to watch how much more you fry it -- if too much water evaporates and the sauce gets too thick, you'll need to add more water. If it's too watery, of course, keep cooking it, and/or add more starch.

9. When the sauce is just about the right consistency, but still a little on the watery side, add chopped scallions. Just the green part, you can save the light green and white parts for fried rice later.

10. Stir a little longer, and then turn off the heat and add chopped basil. I don't know if anyone actually does this in China, but I think basil goes really well in this dish. Especially the purplish kind. 

11. The rice that I forgot to mention until now should also be done. My favorite kind of rice to have with Chinese food is basmati. Therefore my Chinese cooking is always fusion food. 

Spaghetti Melanzane Bolognese (Vegetariano)

Pasta! Who doesn't like pasta. Show me a person who doesn't like pasta. Come on, bring them out. I won't do anything to them. Ok, let's talk about something else.

Last night I made spaghetti with tomato sauce, and I thought it turned out well enough to be worth remembering. And it all started with an eggplant...

I always buy too much eggplant. They look so weird, and you think they'll shrink when you cook them, and above all they don't weigh much so they always trick me into thinking they don't have much substance. So I bought two. Maybe next I'll post what I did with the other one.

First I just sauteed the eggplant by itself. I added a bit of oil, but I don't think it was necessary. After stirring and cooking on medium heat for a little while, the water will come out. One danger with eggplant is not cooking it enough, in which case it can be gross if not painful. With the fat European kind, if it hasn't been roasted to smithereens, it feels like needles are pricking my tongue when I eat it. Does anyone else have that?

Once the eggplant was well-cooked, I added more olive oil, a few cloves of chopped garlic, and some chili flakes. I stirred this for another minute, then added half a can of crushed tomato. Then I chopped a bit of field roast (celebration roast!), and added that along with a small splash of leftover red wine and a pinch of Herbes de Provence, and some salt. I think it's easy to make tomato sauce too sour, or too sweet, or too bland, or too salty, so I also recommend tasting it after each step to avoid any grave blunders.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, meanwhile I boiled the spaghetti. This time I was very diligent about the pasta, because I was hungry and because the sauce was done first, so I kept tasting pieces of it. This turned out to be an excellent behavior, because I knew as soon as it was cooked just enough. And what a difference that made! Pasta cooked just right is like a whole different animal (if pasta were an animal). The sauce almost doesn't matter.

But the sauce does matter. Don't let anyone tell you different, sauce. When the pasta was done and strained I added the chopped basil to the sauce, and turned off the burner right away. Then I served it as shown, with some more of that aged goat cheese (it tastes a lot like sharp cheddar) on top, and some olives. 

A note about the olives -- other times I've chopped them and added them directly to the tomato sauce, but last time I did this the sauce came out way too sour. Any idea why? I didn't even add that many olives. 

One other thing I discovered: orange juice tastes good with gin. Not mixed together, just side by side.

Why? Stuffed Pepper. Don't Ask Questions.

I guess now's as good a time as any to make a blog about food. I probably have all my best cooking years behind me by now, but at least I'll be able to save whatever few gems are left in store for me in the distant future.

I saw this pepper at the farmer's market on Sunday (not yet prepared as depicted). When I saw it, I thought "stuffed pepper". I don't even know what a stuffed pepper is, really, let alone how to make one, so I guess I was brainwashed by advertising.

Well, in my imagination, a stuffed pepper is filled with rice, stir-fried with some spices and maybe tomatoes, and cheese. And there might be an egg, just to give it that chili relleno aspect, but I'll leave that for next time because it sounds complicated.

Here I'll try to conjure up all the steps I followed yesterday from my spongy memory:

Stuffed Pepper à la brainwash

Ingredients

- green pepper as depicted, 1

- basmati rice, half cup (dry). leftover is fine. 

- heirloom tomato, 1

- green onion, 2 sprigs

- garlic, 2 cloves

- turmeric, 1 pinch

- paprika, 3 pinches & 1 specksworth

- cumin, 1 pinch

- salt

- olive oil

- chili flakes, a few shakes

- aged goat cheese, some

Steps

1. Chop things. Heat the pan.

2. Add olive oil, then chili flakes, then garlic and the white part of the scallions, wait a few seconds, then add the spices, wait a few seconds, then add the rice and tomato. 

3. Stir so nothing sticks, and the rice absorbs the water from the tomato. Add more oil if necessary to give it a good consistency.

4. When it's almost done, sprinkle in the cheese, and cook just enough for it to get melty, but not enough so it all starts to congeal into one blob.

Here, while the rice was frying, I made a space in the center and added the pepper. I couldn't cook it this way, though, because I had to avoid burning the rice. When I realized this, I took the rice out of the pan, and stuffed it inside the pepper, and then put the whole thing back on the pan, but the pepper was still taking too long to cook, and I ate it when it was still mostly raw.

Next time I'll try stuffing the pepper and then baking it in the oven. Also I'll probably add more cheese to hold it together, because the rice was falling out a little bit. 

Anyway, the results this time were delicious nonetheless. And yes, that's my eating stapler.

Few things go better with rice-stuffed peppers than miso soup. I think this was the best one I've made so far, so it's worth recording.

Miso soup
1. Boil some water, maybe two or three large bowlsworth
2. Add a handful of dry shiitake mushrooms
3. Boil for half an hour (while your stuffed pepper is cooking)
4. Add some あげ　(fried tofu skin-like thing)
5. Add bonito flakes (half a satchelsworth'll do), a splash of soy sauce, some 春菊（shungiku) as shown, and scallions. Then immediately remove from heat once the scallions have been added.
6. After letting the soup cool for a couple minutes, add a tablespoon of miso. I've found it easiest to take a small cup or ladlesworth of soup and swish the spoonful of miso in there until it dissolves. Otherwise the miso blob just gets lost in the big pot of soup.

Well, that was a good meal, so I'm glad it will live on for the remaining lifespan of the internet. If anyone else actually reads this, let me know! Especially if you have any questions, or suggestions for what I can do better.

Here's another picture similar to one of the ones above.