Thai Eggplant

2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper
3 baby eggplants or about 1/2 a big one, cubed into bite-sized chunks
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium bell pepper, diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbs rice vinegar
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs dark brown sugar
20 leaves fresh basil, shredded or torn

1. Heat large skillet or wok on med-high. Add oil and crushed pepper and let sizzle 10 to 15 seconds.
2. Add eggplant and stir-fry 2 or 3 minutes.
3. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic and stir-fry 3 more minutes.
4. Add vinegar and soy sauce and sprinkle with sugar. Toss for 1 or 2 minutes until liquid thickens slightly.
5. Remove pan from heat and add basil. Toss to combine and serve over rice.

The red pepper flakes make it pretty spicy, so cut down or leave them out if you're not into that. Also, you might want to hold your breath when you first throw them in--they always make me cough.
You can also cheat and use dried basil--I don't measure, I just sprinkle a generous amount and it seems to work.

Bruschetta

This is actually a place-holding post. I can't seem to access the greenonioneater blog at the moment, and I'm hoping greenonioneater-san will be kind enough to post here her recipe for bruschetta. Thanks in advance.

New Foods (left coast edition)

Lemon Verbena-san had a good idea there, so since I haven't had the energy to make any reportable recipes lately, I'm going to steal it. Here are three things we've tried recently:

1) Brianna's Champagne Caper Vinaigrette salad dressing. Brianna's and Newman's are the two brands of dressing we favor; Brianna's because they're all excellent, and Newman's because they make some standard flavors that Brianna's doesn't. This flavor seems to be new, or at least we hadn't seen it before. It's creamier than most vinaigrettes, with a nice spicy kick. A winner.

2) Sierra Nevada Porter & Spicy Brown Mustard. Inspired by Greenonioneater-san, I think, raving about brown mustards, I picked this one up. This makes it sound like it was Cooking with Booze week at our house, which it wasn't... Anyway, this is pretty good. I haven't been into brown mustards for quite a while, but this has a more interesting, complex taste than I remember Gulden's having. I'd be curious to hear from a connoisseur.

3) Sun-dried tomatoes, bottled. This was kind of a bust, not because they don't taste good, but because I don't know what to do with them. I like sun-dried tomato alfredo pasta sauce, the kind that comes ready made in a jar, and I figured maybe putting actual sun-dried etc in a straight alfredo sauce would be tastier, but what I did wasn't. I think it's because I just don't know what I'm doing with them. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to actually use a jar of sun-dried tomatoes?

New Food! Yay! (second installment)

I've had five new foods recently, some of which were pretty interesting:

1. Masa's miso sesame dressing (Glynne's recommendation), which I had on Glynne's cabbage salad. I highly recommend both the salad recipe and the dressing.
2. Sylvia's honey mustard--not my favorite, to be honest. I like my honey mustard on the spicy side, and this one is fairly sweet and a bit vinegary for me.
3. Beecher's Marco Polo cheese (tastes like a jack with peppercorns). This is by the same people who make that No Woman jerk cheese Glynne recommended, and I like this one, too. The peppercorns are good without overwhelming the cheese.
4. Black spaghetti from Target. It's black because it's made with squid ink (which I realized later is probably not very vegetarian, oops). To me, it tastes like regular white spaghetti, but it stays totally black even when you cook it so it looks really dramatic.

5. Mahjoub family harissa sauce, which I ordered from http://www.thespicehouse.com
I have this one Moroccan-style soup recipe (which I will post sometime) which uses harissa, but there's no good place to get it around here. Many Lands down in Provo has had one brand in the past that I didn't like much, and when I made my own it didn't turn out that great. But this stuff is really good, though fairly spicy. The main spices in harissa, from what I can tell, are garlic, coriander, and caraway, and this brand has those in a base of olive oil, pimentos, and sundried tomatoes. So it has this great sweet-and-spicy thing going on that makes me want to experiment with it in other recipes. I think I'll try adding it to bruschetta one of these days. Yum.

hoisin beef with soybeans and noodles

i randomly got this recipe from eatingwell.com. we had it for dinner tonight and it was AWESOME.

ingredients:
8 oz. noodles (i used buckwheat noodles, but whole wheat spaghetti would do)
3 tbs lime juice
3 tbs hoisin sauce
2 tsp chili-garlic sauce
1 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp sesame oil
8 oz. flank steak, thinly sliced (trim the fat off)
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
10 oz. frozen shelled soybeans, thawed
1 tbs fresh minced ginger (or not fresh as the case may be)
cilantro

preparation:
prepare noodles according to package directions. drain.

whisk together lime juice, hoisin sauce, chili-garlic sauce, and cornstarch. save.

heat oil over med-high heat. add steak and cook until just cooked through. transfer steak to a plate. add bell pepper to the meat juices and cook, stirring, for about a minute. add soybeans and cook through, about 2 minutes. (in my case, the soybeans were still frozen, so i did them first and then the pepper) stir in the sauce, and the beef. cook, stirring, about 1 minute. add noodles, toss. sprinkle cilantro on top.


vegetarian note: i think this would taste equally good sans beef, but with more peppers...also seems like it would be a good candidate for tempeh or seitan.

Chili

This is one of our favorite recipes. Its official title is Chili Sin Carne, but we usually call it chili stew because of all the veggies. As you can see, it makes a lot of soup, enough for a solid dinner for two and lunch for two the next day. It takes a little while because of all the chopping, but in my world, it's totally worth the effort. It's slightly-but-not-too-spicy the way it's written, but if you want to unspice it just leave out the red pepper flakes.

Chili Stew

2 Tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (1 ½ cups)
2 carrots, diced (1 cup)
1 small bell pepper, diced (1 cup)
4 cloves garlic, minced (4 tsp)
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes (not drained)
1 15-oz can black beans, drained
1 15-oz can kidney beans, drained
1 12-oz package Morningstar soy crumbles (or cook up the same amount of real meat)
2 Tbs chili powder
1 Tbs plus 1 tsp cumin
1 Tbs brown sugar
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes (to taste)
10 ounces frozen corn

1.Heat oil in large pot on medium-high. Add onion and saute 2 minutes. Add carrots and bell pepper and saute 2 more minutes. Add garlic and saute 1 more minute.
2.Add everything else except corn, add a cup or so of water, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3.Add corn, add a little water if the chili is too thick for you, and simmer 10 more minutes.

The results of the new foods

Squash Blossoms: They are incredible. The flavor is best described as delicately zucchini-like. Since they are flowers, they have a nice, thin texture that really works well fried. I looked up a lot a recipes and tried to figure out the easiest way to deal with them and get a good concept of their taste. This is what I did:

9 whole squash blossoms, rinsed and patted dry
corn starch for dredging
1/2 cup olive oil
salt
garlic powder

I dredged the blossoms in the corn starch and just pan fried them until they got a light golden brown (and crisped up). I sprinkled a little salt and later a tiny bit of garlic powder. THEY WERE AWESOME!!!! Why can't I eat these forever? Seriously, why?!?!

DRAGON FRUIT: Ummmmm, yeah it doesn't taste like anything. It's beautiful and had the texture of a soft kiwi but it really just didn't taste like anything. It didn't even really smell like anything.

TOFU: I made fried tofu (with a cornstarch coating) and dipped them in a hoisin/soy sauce. Pretty good :) Not my new favorite food ever but pretty good.

Cactus Pears are yet to come.... Also to come, pictures!