Post-Thanksgiving Persian Style Eggplant

Oh, how I wished this looked as good as it tastes, because it actually tastes quite good. It's the walnuts. I know it is. They made everything tan. But when I served this at a potluck recently, people actually went back for seconds.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The potluck: A friend had just returned from a trip to Iran with National Geographic Expeditions. They went to all sorts of places - many of the places that tourists would want to go, and some places up in the north that most tourists never make it to. They visited sites whose history stretches back over 4,000 years. The roots of that civilization run deep.

During the course of this trip, their guide was quite open with them, and they had a chance to ask all kinds of "sensitive" questions. The outcome was not surprising: The news we get in this country isn't the same as what the people in Iran think and feel and know to be true. It's the blind men and the elephant all over again. I don't pretend to have a handle on the truth here, just a great appreciation for some understanding of how the people of Iran view the US - they were overwhelmingly positive about Americans - and how they viewed our respective governments - they felt that the problems between our countries had more to do with government than the people.

A lively discussion followed the slide and video show my friend presented to us. I was delighted to be in the company of a group of people who have traveled widely and who were interested in other cultures and ideas. I was also delighted to be treated to some imaginative food. One woman brought a dish which consisted of lentils, dates, beef and I don't remember what else. I must find out in order to create something in that theme. It was the only other dish which might have been considered Persian. (Just think "lamb" instead of "beef".)

I knew I was going to do an eggplant dish as a compliment to the theme of the evening. And once I understood that eggplant would be my contribution, I immediately thought of combining it with walnuts and pomegranate. Very middle eastern. I searched and found a recipe - I can't remember where - which I followed quite loosely. This is what I copied for the ingredients:

5 Asian eggplants (2lb), or 2 large common eggplants with bitterness removed
6 t Olive oil
1 Medium-sized onion, peeled and sliced
2 cloves Garlic, peeled and chopped
2 tsp Ground cumin
1/4 tsp Ground cinnamon
2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp Ground turmeric
1 tsp Crushed red pepper
1 cup Chopped fresh parsley
2 cups Chopped cilantro leaves, plus 1 cup leaves for garnish
1/2 cup Chopped fresh mint
2 cups (1/2 lb) toasted walnuts
1/2 cup Pomegranate paste diluted with 2 1/2 cups water, or 3 cups pomegranate juice
1 t Honey or brown sugar, as needed

And the preparation:

1. Peel eggplants, and remove stems. Place segments of common eggplants, if using, in salted water to remove bitterness. Rinse Asian eggplants, squeeze out water with towels and slice into 1 inch thick rounds.

2. Heat 4 T oil in deep skillet over medium heat. Add eggplant, and saute on all sides about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove eggplants from skillet, drain on paper towels and set aside. Add remaining oil to skillet, and reheat over medium heat. Add onion and saute for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Add garlic during last few minutes of browning onions, and continue cooking. Add cumin, cinnamon, salt, pepper, turmeric, crushed red pepper, parsley, cilantro and fresh mint, and saute for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat, and set aside.

3. Grind walnuts in food processor until very fine or sauce will be gritty. Combine walnuts with diluted pomegranate paste and honey, as needed, and stir until sauce is smooth.

4. Pour sauce into skillet. Return eggplants and seasoning to skillet, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer mixture for 30 minutes, or until eggplants are tender, stirring occasionally with wooden spoon. If sauce is too sour, add more honey or brown sugar to taste.

Kitchen Notes:

OK, so I didn't do this exactly. I didn't get to the store which sells pomegranate seeds, but I did find myself in Whole Foods where I got some pomegranate molasses. I've been wanting to experiment with it for some time, and this seemed like the perfect excuse. I think pomegranate molasses has become my new favorite ingredient! You'll need some brown sugar for this, as the molasses isn't all that sweet, but keep tasting it till it seems right.

Oh, and that step #3 above? That's where everything turns tan. I'm thinking that I'm going to experiment next time with some chopped walnuts and adding some pomegranate seeds to make it look prettier. I'll also use some pomegranate juice in addition to the molasses to have enough sauce.

If you try this one and experiment with it, I'd love to hear how you changed it!

Mac-n-cheese for fall

I kept wondering what I was going to do with that second half of the pumpkin. Pumpkin bread kept coming to mind - or perhaps muffins. They'd be great to bring to work. Oh, but I really wanted those pumpkin muffins! But somehow, they just didn't want to be baked. It seemed to me that the pumpkin had other ideas, and it was my job to figure out what those ideas were.

So I thought about it as I went about my days, cooking other meals, reaching into the pantry for other ingredients, and spying that pumpkin, lying in it's bag in the bottom of the fridge.

Just who ARE you, and why can't you just be something ordinary, like bread?
Pumpkin was silent.

I began using the island in my kitchen to cut mattes. Our office has been redecorated with new colors, a new desk and new carpeting. There's a lot of wall space, just waiting for something to go up, and I've got a lot of photos that need to be hung up. A friend gave me a matte cutter, and I've made more trips than I'd care to think about to the art store for mattes. It's been fun, but humbling. My friend who gave me the matte cutter told me that it was simple. It's not. I've yet to achieve that perfectly straight edge, even though I'm using a blade that hooks onto a metal rail, so to speak. But I will get better at this if I keep doing it. I'm determined....

So my kitchen has been used for art projects more than cooking. (It's a good think I make large amounts when I cook -- I'd never survive without leftovers!) Art projects make me hungry, and I find myself snacking. Reaching into the pantry for some dried fruit....or just searching for an idea....

And then I realized that I've been looking at the answer to pumpkin's second incarnation all along. That jar with the little elbow pasta, sitting in the front of the pantry..... It's getting dark early, and even though it isn't particularly cold, it's still the time of year where I start looking for comfort food. How about a pumpkin mac and cheese? Never heard of it, but it sounded like it might work.

I started by making some browned sage butter, then added the pumpkin, which I had mashed with a potato masher. And then I grated some sharp cheddar. I bought a package which weighed in at .72 pounds, and I used about half of it. After stirring that into the mashed pumpkin, I added the mixture to the cooked pasta, scooped it into baking dishes and popped it into a 375 oven for about 15-20 minutes. It turned out surprisingly well for something that took almost no time or effort to make. It had a nice balance between sweet and salty, and that hint of sage in the background. The only thing I might tinker with is the idea of throwing in some roasted pumpkin seeds. I think I'd like the crunch...

The dish you see in the photo was given to me by the wonderful Cynthia over at Tastes Like Home. I made a comment on her blog that I loved the serving pan she had in one of her photos, and the next thing I knew she sent me two of them! Is that gracious, or what?

Pumpkin Soup

It's that time of the year again. I absolutely adore autumn!! My biggest problem with living in San Diego is that the weather here is so incredibly temperate the whole year long, that we don't get that achingly beautiful autumn that I remember from childhood. Oh, we have it - but if you live in town you have to drive to the mountains to really experience it. It's only about an hour's drive, but that's different than walking out your door in the morning and feeling it, seeing it, smelling it. And yes, tasting it.

Autumn is winter squash time. Pumpkin time. Oranges and dark, dark greens. I had a large pumpkin sitting on my counter, threatening to rot. I do not, as a rule, let food rot. I love food too much to let it rot. So I cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, put a little olive oil on it and roasted it, cut side down on a cookie sheet.

That stopped the rot. Now I had to figure out how to deal with all this pumpkin. This post is about half of it. The soup half. I've made plenty of squash soups in my life, but I don't believe I've ever made one using pumpkin. But in China I ate pumpkin made with garlic - a combo which intrigued me and which turned out to be drop-dead phenomenal. I have no idea what else went into it, but we all ate that one down in a heartbeat. Anyway, it got me to thinking about pumpkin as having much more value than just as a pie filling. So I decided to go for a soup - with an Asian flare.

Now I had to decide what I meant by an Asian flare. I decided that fish sauce and sugar - two basic ingredients in Asian cooking - were essential. And then there's lime. Since I couldn't decide between Kaffir lime leaves or lime juice, I decided to do both. I threw in a handful of leaves, and at the last minute opted for lime zest.

Chicken stock and low fat coconut milk combined to make a tasty stock. I decided not to puree the soup, but to leave some chunks of pumpkin in it. When I tasted it, it still needed something.... maybe some more salt? I scoured my pantry and spied a bottle of Ponzu. Perfect! A good splash of that and voila! A Halloween-cum-Thanksgiving pumpkin soup, perfect for guests, and rescued just in time before it was devoured by a certain new cat.....What's your favorite way to use pumpkin? I need ideas for Part II!!!

Food in China

With close to one and a half billion people to feed, the Chinese use all available space to grow food. And what food!!! Amid the rice terraces, you'll find plots of taro.
And one day, while hiking through the mountains, we came across this woman washing these huge vegetables in a stream. What kind of veggies? I haven't a clue.Everywhere we went, there was corn. Corn hanging from buildings...

And corn ears being shucked by a local farmer....Was this corn for the pigs or for human consumption? We never found out. But every little restaurant we went to had fresh food which was prepared when we ordered it...
And of course, there were some restaurants we avoided...(if you can read the sign, you'll know why!)
Congee was prepared on the streets the way pho is available everywhere in Vietnam...
And thank God we didn't have to live without chili!!!

It was definitely fall. You didn't have to be on the streets of Manhattan to smell the chestnuts..
But you knew you weren't in Manhattan when you saw the sugar cane...China is a food lover's paradise. It is a photographer's paradise. It's also a high tech and high fashion mecca. There's so much to say about it that I obviously cannot say it all in one post. But I'll leave you with one thought. Consider this:

Beijing is the size of Belgium.

And that's just the capital. One city.

Nothing in China is on a small scale....

To be continued....

China!

I'm off to China! Flying to Beijing first, and then down to Guilin for a photo tour. It's hard for me to believe that after all these years of practicing Chinese medicine, I'll actually be going to "the mother land"!!!

I'll be back in early October......Until then, tsai chien!

Pie Are Squared

I first heard the term "tamale pie" from a friend of mine who gave me the recipe. I've long since lost the recipe, but the concept stayed with me, even through "The New Mexican Years". Admittedly, this bears no resemlance to tamales, but that's America for you. Grab onto a good idea and run with it.

Because I'm an acupuncturist and involved in wholistic health, people who don't know me assume I'm "pure" - or whatever they mean by that term -- that I'm a vegetarian or a vegan. I'm not, although I often eat vegetarian meals and can whip up a pretty impressive vegan meal. But periodically the carnivore in me emerges, and when it does, anything goes.

This week, the carnivore came out. I found myself at Whole Foods in front of the meat counter, staring at a package of buffalo meat. I decided it had been way too long since I'd made a tamale pie, so I grabbed some of it, as well as some Kosher ground chicken. I was off to make "White Girl Tamale Pie". Let's face it - the words "tamale" and "pie" in that order in a sentence = white girl! Sounds to me like something that's more out of Good Housekeeping magazine than out of New Mexico magazine.

The concept is easy - Just put a layer of corn tortillas in the bottom of a baking dish. Cover that with a layer of your favorite meat, onion and chili, add some black beans and corn, grate some cheese over the top and throw it in the oven at 350 until it starts to bubble. I use Hatch green chili, but you could just as easily use red chili powder. If you buy a tin of chili powder in the supermarket, it will often come mixed with oregano. That, to me, is not what I mean when I say "chili". Chili is a pepper. It can be red or green, but it's a pepper. It's not a mixture of meat and beans and peppers either - though if you're from Texas it is. But if you're from New Mexico, it's peppers. If it's powdered, it's just peppers. When they ask you in a restaurant "red or green?", they're talking about the peppers - often mixed with onion and garlic.

Anyway, since this is White Girl Tamale Pie, you can pretty much turn it into whatever version of Betty Crocker that suits your fancy. Mine turned out a little too mild for my taste, but I remedied that by adding some chopped tomatoes which I picked from my garden, some more green chili and some diced red onion, mixed together to make my own version of salsa.
I think the reason I opted for turning buffalo and canned beans into White Girl Tamale Pie is because I can't think these days. I needed something that could sustain me for several days without my having to come up with something original. You see, my precious cat disappeared the last day of August. It's been devastating. I've had a number of wonderful cats and dogs in my life, and each is special. But then there was Boo.Right now my hope is that someone took her, because there is no sign of anything else in the canyon behind my house. I've scoured it and today a friend of mine scoured it for an hour and a half. Nothing. I'm leaving for China next weekend. My greatest wish is that Boo will show up somehow before I leave....standing at the front door, complaining.

MFK Fisher Revisited...Or...Pass the Wolf, Please..

The news is a constant source of sorrow. There's seldom a bright spot - it's all about job losses and housing prices falling, and people unable to afford health care, and criminal politicians. And all of that against a backdrop of global warming and unending wars.

So it seemed like a good time to re-read MFK Fisher's "How To Cook A Wolf". First published in 1942 against a backdrop of wartime food shortages, the book was written as a meditation on how to live with grace under the cruelest circumstances. With the wolf sniffing at the door, the most practical response is to learn how to cook the wolf. She speaks of the men and women who cooked and marketed their way though the war who "will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts."

I consider myself among the lucky... I have a job. Well, I'm self employed, so of course I have a job, and even though business is slower than it's been, I still have work. I've seen the wolf in the canyon below my house. My neighbors have reported it in their back yards. But so far, he has not come to my door.

How to Catch the Wolf

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
Aristocracy, Ralph Waldo Emerson

While I'm not always sure about the magnificence, I know that everyone around me seems to be more interested in the notion that food comes from the earth. Small pots of herbs seem to be springing up in everyone's kitchens or tiny side yards. More people are joining community gardens. When I put my lunch in the fridge at work yesterday, I noticed one of those black plastic, one gallon pots from a nursery, sitting next to the sink with tiny yellow and red grape tomatoes in it. Someone's overflow.

Leftovers have become popular again. I've known people who, for many years, wouldn't consider saving leftovers. At the end of each dinner, they'd toss whatever was left over into the garbage. I always stood there in mute horror as I watched perfectly good food being thrown away. Now these same people, while not always creative with their leftovers, are dumping them back into a container and stashing them in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch.

When I lived in New Mexico, I learned about leftovers. Bob would always cook huge meals, even though there was usually just the two of us. But that gave us plenty of leftovers - some eaten "straight up" (just the way they were cooked originally), and some turned into another kind of a dish - a soup, a stew, a curry. One of Bob's go-to solutions for leftovers was pasta or rice. By sauteing an onion and some garlic, he primed us for a meal. If anyone walked in at that point, there was the inevitable "Boy, that smells good! What are you making?"
These are two variations of my standard leftover fare. There's a rice version with some leftover veggies, and a pasta version (about to be popped into the oven) with some chopped up chicken breast (left over from a barbecue) and the remains of some mozzarella cubed over the top. Both could be considered as being made by someone "living on a war budget", but the addition of herbs (fresh from my garden), and/or chili and some rich cheese, yields - perhaps not magnificence - but surprisingly satisfying meals.