I am not always one for fusion dishes. Quite a few of them come across as less fusion and more like confusion, with muddled flavors and odd combinations of unrelated ingredients.
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But, as I was planting my Thai basil this spring, right next to a planter full of Italian and Greek basil, I thought, “I wonder what it would taste like if I took the idea of pesto and made it Thai? I couldn’t imagine it would be bad, and besides, pesto is similar in some respects to Thai curry pastes (and it is very similar to green cilantro chutney in Indian cuisine, but that is beside the point), so there is enough similarity going on that I thought it must be doable.

So, I got to thinking of the ingredients that are in traditional Genovese pesto: basil, garlic, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.

And I thought, what are the cognates in Thai cuisine? Well, basil is simple–I’d just use Thai sweet basil instead of the Italian type. Garlic is garlic, all around the world, and it is always good. Instead of pine nuts, I could use peanuts. And I could replace olive oil, with fragrant cold pressed peanut oil. But what about the Parmesan cheese?

I was stuck there for a few minutes until I came at the problem from a different direction. Instead of worrying that there is no traditional cheese in Thailand, I thought about what function the Parmesan cheese serves in pesto. I pondered on the issue for a time and realized that while it adds some salt that isn’t the main function of the Parmesan. It isn’t in there to taste “cheesy” either–good pesto doesn’t ever have an overwhelming cheese flavor.

It is there to give the sauce that fifth taste–the jolt of umami–that savory “je-ne-sais-quoi” that you may not be able to identify in a dish, but if it is missing, you notice its lack.

Aha! I had it–what in Thai food is used to give the umami burst? Fish sauce is the most obvious answer, but I didn’t want to use it because I didn’t want to add more liquid to the sauce. Shrimp paste, which is used in many Thai curries is the obvious answer, and were I not possibly allergic to shrimp, that is what I would have used. (And that is what I suggest those who experiment with this recipe use, if they can get it and if they can eat shellfish with impunity, unlike myself. Lucky devils!)

What I ended up using was anchovy paste. Which, while it is an Italian ingredient, makes sense in a Thai context because fish sauce is made from anchovies. Voila!

My basic ingredients were set, but I decided to add some fresh Thai chilies, because I thought the sauce would taste better with them, and because I have been known to add chile flakes to my regular old Italian pesto. And, I decided to add a squeeze of lime juice at the end, after the noodles were tossed, to give a little sparkling finish to the flavors, as is done in many Thai recipes.

And, as I was grinding up the pesto itself in the food processor, I tasted it when it was about halfway there, and realized something about the physical properties of Thai basil vs. Italian basil. Firstly, the leaves are a bit drier in texture, so they don’t emulsify and puree quite so readily and secondly, they are a little bit stringier in texture as well.

I decided that the sauce would need something to help smooth it out and make it creamier. I could have added some water to the mix, in order to make up for the lack of water in the basil’s leaves, but I was afraid it would water down the flavor too much. Instead, I added about three good heaping tablespoons of nice, well-stirred coconut milk.

That was the ticket–when I finished pureeing the sauce and tasted it–it was perfect in texture, color and flavor. It was pesto, but it was Thai, and it was delicious.

Then, I had to figure out what I was going to stir my fragrant, verdant, silky-smooth sauce into.

I decided to make a dish of stir-fried rice rice noodles with thin slivers of chicken, julienne-cut carrots, diagonally sliced haricot vert, halved cherry tomatoes and julienned yellow bell pepper. The seasonings for this stir fry were simple: thinly sliced shallots, fish sauce, and a bit of sugar.

This set a fairly neutral stage for the Thai pesto which was tossed in along with a generous squeeze of lime juice after everything else was cooked and I had taken the wok off the heat. After that, I garnished each portion with a few lightly crushed bits of peanut and some shaggy, deep purple Thai basil flowers.

How did it turn out?

It was bright and sparkly–the lime juice finish really perks the dish up and makes it sing. The peanut oil, which really needs to be a good fragrant, barely refined cold-pressed oil like Loriva or Spectrum, gave the nutty base notes to the sauce, while the anise-like Thai sweet basil sang and danced out front, taking up all of the attention on the tongue until the garlic and chilies kicked in and made tingles shiver through the palate. The anchovy paste added that umami punch that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but was there, and really tied the ensemble together.

Oh, wow. That is what everyone said as they took their first bites. Morganna’s first words after “Oh, wow,” were, “Mom, when you open your restaurant, I assume this is going on the menu?”

“Yeah,” was the one-word reply.

Brittney’s exclamation said it all: “Amen.”

Thai Pesto Noodles
Ingredients For The Pesto:

2-3 cups fresh Thai sweet basil leaves, all stemmy bits removed
2-5 cloves garlic–this depends on how garlicky your garlic is, and how garlicky you want your pesto to be
1/3 cup toasted unsalted peanuts–use the best peanuts you can find for this.
1-3 fresh Thai bird chilies–depending on how spicy you want your sauce to be
1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste or about 1/3 teaspoon Thai shrimp paste (if you are a vegetarian, use either red or white miso here instead)
1/3-1/2 cup really good cold pressed hardly refined, fragrant peanut oil–Loriva or Spectrum are my favored brands
2-3 good heaping tablespoons of thick coconut milk–i used Chaokoh brand here.
salt to taste

Method For Pesto:

Put the basil, garlic, peanuts, chilies and anchovy paste into the food processor and start grinding. While it is going, pour in the peanut oil. Stop grinding and scrape down workbowl. Add coconut milk, then finish processing the sauce into a thick, brilliant green paste. Do this -right before- you are going to cook the noodles–if you do it before you do all of your prep, the pesto will oxidize and turn from green to brown. As it is, the pesto turns quickly once you toss it with the rice noodles, but there is no sense in starting out with it already a dull greenish brown, is there?

Ingredients For The Noodles:

1 14 ounce package 1/4″ wide rice sticks or rice noodles
1 chicken breast, cut into 1″X!/4″X1/8″ strips
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon raw or palm sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
canola or peanut oil for stir frying (about 3 tablespoons should be sufficient)
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 cup julienne-cut carrots
1 cup topped and tailed then diagonally sliced haricot verts or very young stringless green beans
1/3 cup julienne-cut yellow bell pepper
1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes (I used Sungold–yum!)
1/3-1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock or broth
juice of 1/2 lime or to taste
cilantro leaves, Thai basil flowers or leaves and lightly crushed unsalted peanuts for garnish

Method:

Soak the noodles in warm water until they are pliable and turn from translucent to opaque white. Drain well and allow to dry in the air slightly while you do the rest of your prep.

Toss the chicken with the fish sauce, sugar and cornstarch and set aside for at least twenty minutes.

When the noodles are drained and lightly dried, and the chicken is done marinating, the vegetables are cut and the peso is ground up, heat your wok over high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke rises from it. Add the peanut oil to the wok and allow it to heat briefly until it shimmers.

Add the shallots, and cook, stirring, until they take on a bit of golden brown color–about two to three minutes. Add the chicken and stir it into a single layer on the bottom fo the wok. Allow it to rest, undisturbed for about a minute or so to brown on the bottom, then start stirring.

Cook until most of the pink has turned to brown or white. Add the fish sauce and continue cooking, scraping any browned bits of marinade off the sides of the wok until most of the fish sauce has bubbled away.

Add the carrots and haricots verts and continue cooking until they brighten in color and are nearly properly crisp-tender. Add the pepper strips and cherry tomatoes, then the noodles, Cook, stirring, until the noodles soften slightly. Add the broth and continue cooking and stirring until the vegetables are done and the noodles are soft, yet still a bit chewy. Remove from heat and scrape the pesto into the wok and toss the noodles and pasta until they are thoroughly combined. Squeeze in the lime juice and toss to combine, then dish into warmed individual serving bowls.

Top each serving with the garnishes and serve immediately.

I thought that we were going to be able to terrace the back yard into a workable garden space this year; alas, however, the intractable slope remains intact. The French drains that keep the water run-off from turning our grassy hill into a mudslide have collapsed, resulting in a bog at the top of the hill. So, we are having new drainage installed, as is everyone else who lives at the top of this hill–the neighbors on both sides are having it done, as well as folks up the hill a ways further. It has been a very wet spring and summer, and so it makes sense to deal with the drainage issues.

So, once again, I am gardening exclusively on our deck. However, instead of my usual mixture of decorative and food plants, this time around, I am growing only food, and am surprised at the amount of plants I can grow on the deck.

I have a dozen Thai chili plants, forty basil plants of various sorts–four different varieties in total, a handful of different herb plants, seven large tomato plants, and about forty gai lan plants poking their little sprouty selves up out of the dirt. Last week, I also sowed about twenty methi plants, a bunch of cilantro seed, a potful of mizuna and around the gai lan, which is in a whiskey barrel planter (cut in half longitudinally and set on its side in a cradle which keeps it from rocking), I have sown a lot of baby Shanghai bok choi seeds. I also have ordered another large planter to sow with more gai lan and baby bok choi.

I am amazed at how prolific the garden is, and last night, I took the first harvest from it–a huge bouquet of Siam Queen Thai basil and five Thai bird chilies, which I used in my favorite summer dish: Spicy Thai Basil Chicken. Tomorrow night when I come home from work, I will harvest a big bouquet of Italian basil and make pesto, the first of many batches from my own garden.

There are dozens of clusters of tiny green tomatoes, looking like jade beads, dangling from the five-foot high (and still growing) tomato vines. Kat and I watch them greedily, waiting for them to ripen. There are four different varieties of grape/cherry tomatoes–a green one, a black one, a yellow one and a red and yellow striped one, and then there are three roma type paste tomatoes, called San Marzano. The vines of the plants are amazingly strong–stronger than the ones I planted last year–I planted these tomatoes very deeply in the planter, so that roots grew out of the stems I buried in the compost, peat moss and soil mixture in the self-watering planter. This practice, which I read about last year, creates a stronger, more wide-reaching root system which helps to anchor the plant well and also helps the plant survive drought better, although, unlike last year, this year, lack of rain hardly seems to be the problem. (We’ll see how August goes–that is usually the driest month in our part of Ohio.)

It is always amazing to me how well compost and other organic fertilizers, such as livestock manure and fish, bone or blood meal, feed plants and help them to grow strong and healthy. I overcrowd my plants in the garden–the kindest way to put it is that I garden intensively, though truthfully, it is not just that I admire and emulate the work of John Jeavons, but because I am lazy and hate mulching and weeding. The thing is, if you crowd your plants together in a container or even in the ground itself, the plants grow together and their leaves form a perfect canopy, shading the roots, which not only discourages the growth of weeds (weed seeds are triggered to sprout by the sun), but helps to retain water. It isn’t as efficient as mulching, but then mulch isn’t always the be-all and end-all of gardening–it can harbor mice, slugs, mold and other plant killers. In very wet weather like we have been having, it can trap too much water, leading to root rot and worse, so this year, I don’t feel quite so lazy about going mulch-free.

Right now, my favorite bit of the garden is the half of a whiskey barrel that is serving as a seedbed for gai lan, baby bok choi and methi.

I got tired of not being able to get farmers around here to grow these vegetables consistently, so I decided to up and do it myself. Why not? I had the whiskey barrel empty–it usually harbored a garden of coleus plants–and I had some seeds. The fenugreek (methi) seeds I had were from the Indian market, and they were meant to be ground up and used as a spice. Instead, I soaked them for twenty-four hours, then laid the mushy seeds on damp paper towels, then covered them in another layer of damp paper towels and set them on a cookie sheet in a sunny window for about four days, dampening the towels twice daily. On the third day, I took the top towel off and let the sprouts which were springing forth grow upward toward the light.

The next day, I transferred the strongest sprouts, of which there were around forty or so, to the whiskey barrel and to various pots. The soil was light and friable, amended well with compost, manure and fish meal, and so far, even though right after I planted the tiny things, we had a huge thunderstorm with heavy downpours, the methi plant babies are going strong, putting out roots and working on making true leaves.

The gai lan has already started putting out true leaves, and I will have to thin it soon. But I am still waiting for the cilantro, bok choi and mizuna to sprout.

I can’t wait to see how well they do.

I promise to continue to blog about my green miracles on the deck as they grow and as I harvest, as well as chronicling the delicacies I make from them.

In the meantime, for those who want to grow their own Asian vegetables, you can get seeds for many varieties of greens, roots and herbs from Evergreen Seeds. They ship quickly and their prices are great.

Sometimes I cannot get enough of garlic; I think it is probably my favorite member of the allium family. I use more onions by weight in my cooking than I do garlic, but that is partially because garlic manages to pack a healthy wallop of flavor in a very small package, compared to onions, so I don’t -need- to use as much of it. That said, I admit that I use a lot more garlic than a lot of people I know. I have been known to use entire heads of it at a time for a single meal, sometimes, in a single dish. Since I grew up in a household where one head of garlic was kept and used over a period of weeks–well, you get the idea.

I like garlic.

A lot.

The coolest thing about living in a town surrounded by farms, though, is that I have learned how to cook and eat garlic in many more forms than I might otherwise have experienced. There is green garlic, which is nothing but young garlic shoots, which you chop or slice up and eat from the root to the top of the leaf. It is filled not only with garlic’s characteristic bite, but also a sweet verdant taste that is reminiscent of chives. Green elephant garlic is amazing–the size and shape of leeks, with a similar flavor kicked up several notches by the redolent garlic scent. Then there is young garlic–this is immature heads harvested early when the baby cloves are filled with milky juice which is both pungent and sugary. The green parts of young garlic are also edible, but they aren’t as tender as green garlic, so I tend to add them to long-cooked dishes.

My favorite unconventional garlic bit, however, are the scapes–the slender, swan-necked, graceful shoots that emerge in early summer from hardneck varieties of garlic. These shoots which curl so much that they can form perfect spirally circles, carry seed-like reproductive parts called bulbils–essentially, little tiny garlic cloves–and if they are left on the plant, the scapes will drain energy away from the plant, because it is essentially putting all of its strength into going to seed and reproducing itself. In order to get the plant to put its energy into making nice fat garlic heads or bulbs, the grower cuts off these scapes.

And, since these graceful little shoots have a mild garlic flavor and the texture of very young bush green beans, they make a mighty fine vegetable in their own right.

Now that I know about garlic scapes, I wait for them eagerly every summer, and snatch them up gleefully, and cook and eat them until we are all tired of them–just like I do with asparagus. Last night, after work, I cooked them in a stir fry with the first broccoli of the season, fresh purple scallions, some pressed spiced tofu, some pork, fresh garlic, green garlic and ginger, and some chilies, fermented black beans and ground bean sauce for flavor. At the end, I tossed in an entire bunch of cilantro, because–well, just because I had it.

All of the vegetables and meat were local; only the tofu, the rice and condiments came from someplace other than Athens county.

And that was a good feeling.

What was also a good feeling was getting to watch Kat and Cordelia play with a young garlic stalk that had fallen to the floor.

That was entertaining–almost like dinner and a movie. Except this happened while I was cooking the dinner, so it wasn’t quite as relaxing as the typical sort of date scenario. But it was still fun, nonetheless.

The funny thing is that both Kat and Cordelia love garlic.

When I came home from the market yesterday morning, and set down my tote bags, Delia came running, along with the other cats.

This is not unusual, since I always bring the kitties home fresh catnip bouquets, but Delia went right past the huge bundle of the nip and burrowed right into the bag that had the fresh young garlic in it. She dragged out a stalk, and dashed off with it. When I caught up to her, she was chewing the ends off the leaves, purring mightily.

The other cats, being normal, were tearing apart the catnip, rolling around with leaves hanging from their mouths.

But not Delia. She was all about the garlic, and when I made dinner that night, hours later, she started pestering me not when I pulled out the pork, but when I took the young garlic and garlic scapes from the fridge and started cutting them. I ended up giving her the green top of one of the garlics to play with, which ended up with Kat taking over the game.

Which was okay–it was very amusing not only to the cook, the baby and the cat, but also to everyone else who had gathered in the kitchen to keep me company while I cooked.

So, back to garlic scapes–how do I cook them?

I treat them like young, firm green beans–I saute them or stir fry them. I prefer stir frying them, and have done them in a Thai style, but I think I like them cooked Chinese style the best. I also use them in pasta sauces where they stand in for green beans, and add their own subtle garlic fragrance to the dish.

To prepare them, I cut them into 1″ lengths up to the bulbils. The bulbils and the long, thin “whisker” that emerges from them I discard. The whisker is too tough to eat. and sometimes so is the bulbil. Then, I suppose you could blanch them, but I prefer to saute or stir fry them, as I noted above. I love using them as a vegetable, because people cannot tell what they are, that is, unless they have eaten garlic scapes at my house previously. I cook them just until they become tender and the green brightens. If you cook them until they are soft, their texture suffers, and the green dulls and looks sullen. I only cook them until they are tender-crisp, just like I do green beans.

Garlic scapes are great in any context in which one would use green beans. (Except maybe that mushroom soup and greek bean casserole thing. Garlic scapes probably would not be good in that. Although, one could use such a dish as the basis for a gratin of garlic scapes and creamy mushroom sauce. With breadcrumbs and crispy fried onions on top, I bet that would be out of sight.

While they are in season for the next week or so, look for several recipes that use my beloved garlic scapes. (Maybe even a gratin with mushrooms–we do have lots of local mushrooms coming in these days!)

And you will probably see lots of pictures of Kat and Delia playing with garlic bits and pieces as I cook, just because those two are cute beyond words.

Heirloom tomatoes offer an amazing array of colors, shapes and flavors to tempt the palate and the imagination of the cook.

It is great fun to use them in classic recipes to bring a new twist to old favorites. My best beloved heirloom tomatoes are the lovely little Green Zebras. They are about the size of a plum, with chartreuse to yellow skin striped with deep green and kiwi-colored flesh. Their flavor is a good balance of sweet and tart, with a tangy finish that goes beautifully in salsas or with goat cheese in salads. I also like them as a topping on open-faced toasted cheese sandwiches along with basil and pine nuts, but in August, the last thing I want to do is fire up my broiler in order to make lunch.

Gazpacho is a staple recipe in my summer kitchen; this Spanish cold soup is perfect for the sweltering days of August when onions, garlic, tomatoes and cucumbers are in wild abundance, and appetites are on the wane because of the hellish heat. Thanks to modern technology, gazpacho a quick way to use up the bounty from the garden and farmer’s market without lighting a burner on the stove or breaking into a sweat.

There seem to be two ways to eat your gazpacho: blended or chunky. Folks who favor the blended sort of gazpacho like their chilled soup to be smooth, with all the vegetables pureed into a thick, red silken bowl of comfort. This method of preparing the soup forces all of the ingredients marry together into a harmonious whole that is unbroken by individual flavors.

The folks who like their gazpacho chunky, however, want to see the different colors, and experience the different flavors in quick bursts under their teeth. The truth is that even chunky gazpacho has some pureed component to make the dish somewhat sloshy; otherwise one would be eating a salad, not a soup. But aficionados of the chunky gazpacho tend to put as little puree in their soups as is physically possible while still making a soup.

As for me, I fall in the middle. I like the smooth cool puree that goes so soothingly down the throat, but also like a little bit of texture to set my teeth into. So, I make my gazpacho by pureeing 2/3 of my ingredients, and then taking the final third, and dicing or mincing them finely, to be mixed into the frothy puree. An immersion blender makes quick work of this process; all I have to do is roughly chop my tomatoes–I leave the skins on because I like having the fiber in my diet, and because the tiny flecks of yellow and darker green look pretty in the puree–cucumbers, onions, garlic and chile peppers (I was fresh out of sweet peppers–bad me), and then let the blender do the rest. After I add extra virgin olive oil, a dash of white wine vinegar, and a pinch of salt to the bowl, it only takes a few passes with the “magic wand” of the stick blender to take care of this stage of the process.

Within a few seconds, the vegetables are reduced to a frothy, thick liquid the color of a very fresh Haas avocado, with tiny flecks of deep green, yellow and violet from the tomato skins and red onion. The olive oil gives the mixture of delicious velvety quality that is hard to replicate any other way; bread-thickened gazpacho is good, but not as silky as one with a good amount of olive oil in it. (I actually thought of using some avocado to take the place of some of the olive oil, but I wasn’t certain how that would change the taste of the gazpacho. I may try it next week if I can get more Green Zebras at the market this weekend.)

Then, I just carefully dice the other third of the tomatoes, cucumbers and onions finely, and add some minced lemon basil, which is an innovation for the dish this year.It adds a sparkling basil flavor enhanced by a definite citrus tang. I mix them together, leaving a handful of the chopped bits to garnish the top of the soup, and voila! A beautiful cold soup is born: a healthy, light meal or snack to help nourish a wilting body on a sunbaked day.

The green color, punctuated by bits of yellow from the tomato skin, the white of cucumber, and the violet of red onion, is to me more cooling than the traditional red. The colors, in fact, brought to mind the delicate colors of jade: celedon green flecked with emerald and peridot shades, cloud-white and delicate orchid.

The Green Zebras also lent their tang to the soup; I didn’t use as much vinegar in it as I have in past years, in large part because of the acidic tang of the tomatoes, and also because I wanted the lemon basil to take a starring role in the flavor profile of the soup.

It was definitely an experiment which paid off, and I am proud to say that with the exception of the olive oil and vinegar, all of the ingredients for this dish were grown within ten miles of my home: some (the chile and lemon balm) as close as my deck.

When you read the recipe, you will note that some of my measurements are approximate. That is because much of gazpacho making is the art of working “to taste.” Some people like it more sour, others like it sweeter. Some like more of the herbal flavor, while others favor the peppers and cucumbers. Others want nothing to step in front of the voluptuous kiss of the tomatoes.

Just look at this recipe as a guideline and create your own gazpacho of a different color.

Jade Zebra Gazpacho

Before serving, sprinkle garnishes, including whole lemon basil leaves, over the top of the soup, and serve in small cups or bowls as an exquisite appetizer or spoon it into larger bowls for a light lunch.

I may not like summer heat, being as I tend to wilt when temperatures soar above eighty degrees, but I sure love summer.

Why?

Because of all the delicious locally grown produce, of course.

Especially heat lovers like eggplant, known in Hindi as baigan.

Look at those gorgeous little Asian eggplants up there: shiny dark violet skins enrobing spongy greenish flesh with very few seeds and absolutely no bitter juices. I love them. They are luscious to look at and luxurious to eat, so rich, so sweet and so easy to cook. You just cut them and go–with the smaller eggplant varieties, there is absolutely no need to salt them and squeeze out the bitter tears that weep out of them. There is no waiting. They are nearly instant food.

I am going to tell you–I love eggplants cooked any way they can be cooked. I like them in Mediterranean recipes such as rich pasta sauces and moussaka, and I love them in Middle Eastern classics like baba ganoush. And I like them cooked in Thai curries, too. And I like them in Chinese stir fries and braised dishes, even if I haven’t written about those recipes yet.

But my absolute favorite ways with lush sexy aubergines are the recipes from the varied kitchens of India. Oh, how I love baigan bartha, rich with tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices. I also adore the little ones stuffed with a mixture of shredded vegetables, keema sookh and rice, then steam baked, and served with raita or a mango chutney on top.

When I bought these little lovelies at the farmer’s market, I intended to cook them southern Indian style, with a tempering or tarka of chilies, mustard seeds, cumin and curry leaves.

Alas, however, I was sad to find that I had used the last of the curry leaves in my freezer and had forgotten to replenish my supply. Woe!

Necessity, however, is the mother of invention. What I lacked in curry leaves, I made up for in the bunch of fresh methi I had just bought from the farmer’s market. Methi is the greens of the fenugreek plant which gives us fenugreek seeds, an important spice in Indian cookery. The leaves have a very musky, somewhat bitter flavor that also has a sweet, hay-like fragrance.

I had been planning on aloo methi, but taking a long sniff of the fragrant leguminous leaves, I decided that the bitter-sweet flavor of the fresh greens would be just as good as curry leaves with the eggplant–just different.

So, instead of using an established recipe, I went with my own initiative and worked out a recipe myself. I used mustard oil, onions, a wee bit of garlic (garlic and eggplant go together like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in my kitchen–they dance together on the tongue with light and airy steps, leaving behind joy) chili and ginger, and a sprinkling of cumin, mustard seeds and methi seeds. Salt, the methi greens, and of course, a tiny bit of water, made up the rest of the ingredient list, and so, I began cooking.

I cooked it all simply, over high heat, browning the onions deeply first, then adding the whole spices, the garlic, ginger and chili. When these ingredients took on color and fragrance and the mustard seeds popped, in went the eggplant, which I stirred like mad. I added a tiny bit more oil, as eggplant will soak up oil like a sponge, and then I turned the heat down slightly and let the eggplant begin to brown. As it shrank and browned, I threw in the finely minced fresh methi, and sprinkled about a quarter cup of water over it all.

The water simmered away, and then I started to stir, letting the methi leaves cook down and release most of their liquid, and get a tiny bit crispy in places.

With a sprinkle of salt to taste, it was all done: a fragrant medley of flavors, spicy, sweet, musky and hot all at once.

Morganna loved it, and she and I pretty much finished up the entire pan of it last night, with a bit of help from Kat, who also appreciated the complex flavors of the dish. A little tiny bit was left over that I am going to grind up today into a thick puree and freeze in small cubes to use as food for Kat’s lunches and dinners when we are eating things which are not really good for yet, like eggs, curries with nuts and other such baby-unsafe dinners.

Baigan Methi

Serve with rice, raita and dal for a complete meal, or stuff into chapati for a snack.