Annalena diversifies: Eggplant and Potato Stew

As a good Italian woman, Annalena loves her eggplant. This summer, though, she became aware of something: she was sticking to the same, three recipes, over and over for this vegetable: her eggplant parmagiana (which is a very popular item on this blog), caponata (which is not), and baba ghanouj (which isn't even here). For a recipe about which Michael Franks once sang "my baby cooks her eggplant about 47 ways/sometimes I even eat it cold with mayonnaise," this is pretty sorry statistics.

No, I am NOT going to advocate eating eggplant with mayonnaise, although a cold fried eggplant sandwich with mayonnaise is a good thing.

Anyway, when looking for recipes for vegetables, Annalena checks her trove of cookbooks. Her "go to" books let her down this time, so she went a bit deeper and found a trove of recipes in the cookbooks that come out of "Greens" restaurant, in San Francisco.

If you are in the city by the bay and you have opportunity, go to Greens. Go for lunch, or go for dinner. The view is unspeakably gorgeous. The location is quintessentially San Francisco, and the food will make you forget any bad memories you have had of vegetarian food.

This dish has notes of Mexican cooking in it (from the cumin and green sauce), and India (from the tomatoes and ginger in combination), but ultimately, it says CALIFORNIA CUISINE. You'll see what I mean as we go through it.

As Lidia would say "first, let's address the eggplant." You can get a scazillion different varieties of eggplants at your farmers market. For this recipe, you want the big, plump Italian ones. One cooking teacher said "a good eggplant should make you think of a woman in a dress, where you wonder how she fit into it."

Yes, indeed. Plump, firm, no wrinkles. Get big ones, about a pound each, maybe a little more. If you can get a 2 pound critter, you probably shouldn't. It will be very, very seedy. Purple or striped, or white, doesn't much matter. You will also need about a pound and a half of potatoes. Again, go for larger ones. I had three potatoes, and if you don't have a pound and a half, don't worry. The original recipe called for russets, but you're going to be eating the skins here, so I stuck to my favorite yukon golds.

Get four cloves of garlic, peel it, and slice it. Make cuts all around the eggplant, and stud it with the garlic, just like a leg of lamb. This is not the easiest thing in the world to do, let me warn you ahead of time. Then, put the eggplants and the potatoes on a baking sheet, and get them into a 375 oven for about an hour. You want the eggplant to shrivel up, and the potatoes to get soft, but still firm. A knife into the biggest one should give you resistance.

While the veggies are baking, get your other ingredients together. You'll need a bay leaf, and a teaspoon of each of ground cumin, and whole cumin seeds. The whole cumin is a garnish, so if you don't have it, don't sweat. Don't omit the ground stuff. You will also want to chop a large onion into squares. No surgical precision necessary. Grate a tablespoon of fresh ginger (don't leave this out), and then chop up about a pound's worth of tomatoes, any kind. You are also going to want, for later, about half a cup of water, a half cup of some kind of dairy (creme fraiche, yogurt, buttermilk), and either cilantro or some kind of green sauce.

When the vegetables are finished baking, they will be very, VERY hot. Leave them alone to cool, and don't think it's going to happen quickly. You will probably need about an hour or so until you can handle them (so as you can see, this is a make ahead kind of dish). When they are in fact cool enough to handle, chop the potatoes into big cubes. Scrape the pulp from the eggplant, and combine them. I did this the night before, and did all the other veggie prep the day of dinner.

Now, when you're ready to cook, put about four tablespoons of vegetable oil (you'll be tempted, but don't use olive oil) into a pan. Add the bayleaf, and simmer until it crisps up, then get rid of it. Add the onion, the cumin and the ginger, and cook this stuff over a medium flame, until the onion softens. Now add the eggplant, the tomatoes, the potatoes, the ground cumin and your liquid. Turn the veggies, getting them nice and warm, or hot, as you see fit. You should now go for your salt and add it generously. These veggies take a LOT of salt. Taste to see if you like it. If you want things spicier, you can, of course doctor this with jalapenos, or anything you like, but do pay heed to the salt. And when you have it where you like it, take it off the heat, stir in the dairy and the cilantro or the sauce, and...VOILA.

The eggplant sort of becomes a sauce for the potatoes, and it's a velvety one, that tastes like it has more fat in it than it does. It is surprisingly mild for a dish that looks like it should be Indian or Mexican in nature.

As written, this was suggested to be served with rice.

Uh... Hmm. Potatoes and rice. Well, on the one hand, but on the other, no. Annalena served this with sauteed amaranth greens, and it reminded her of a story from Greens, with a difficult customer, and a substitution of couscous for greens, but that is left for another day.

Carry on, ragazzi. You will be seeing more "alternative" eggplant recipes as their season continues