‘Cause I been doin’ a lotta jammin,’ and I wanna jam it wid you.

Last year, I only made strawberry jam, and I THOUGHT I made enough for last at least part way through the winter, with something like 12 half pints, but I was so wrong. WRONG because Zak liked it so much that he invented reasons to eat it. Totally unnecessary peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on good bakery bread with good peanut butter were made and consumed just so he could eat more of that strawberry jam.

This year, I made twenty-one half pints of it and then froze a bunch of berries to make more when that ran out. I made strawberry jam back in May, and guess what? I already have to break out some frozen berries to make up another big old batch.

But that’s not the jam I made today.

Oh, no, chile.

Strawberry jam is good, but what I made today is like heaven in a jar.

Because Kat, Zak and I went out to our friend, Rick Vest’s farm and picked blackberries from bushes that were burdened with heavy fruit. And to me, there is nothing better than homemade blackberry jam. Nothing. It’s SO good. So tangy-sweet, sticky and the color–red-violet–is just eye-popping.

And, if you leave the seeds in, which I always do, blackberry jam is simplicity itself to make.

Why do I leave the seeds in?

Well, I figure when I eat blackberries, I’m eating the seeds so why should I object to the seeds being in the jam? I mean, really. Plus, I’ve found that if you try and remove the seeds, you lose a lot of the fruit pulp, too, and I refuse to waste something that I spent hours in the hot sun picking in the company of bees, wasps, mosquitoes and a child complaining of heat and thirst.

So, when you eat my blackberry jam, you’re eating it with the seeds. And if I use it in any of my baking, you get the seeds. If you don’t like the seeds consult with a less lazy blogger to find out how to remove the wee buggers without ending up needing to pick a thousand pounds of berries for a few pints of jam. I’m just not your girl for that process.

And while you’re looking stuff up, find out how to clean and treat your jars, lids and rings for safe canning by looking at the USDA National Center for Home Food Preservation’s website. They have all the information you need to know to can safely. They will of course, also try and scare you to death about canning, but the fact is, lots of us have canned for years and never killed anyone yet, so just follow their directions to prepare your half-pint canning jars, new lids and rings for this recipe and you will not go wrong.

For this recipe, I cleaned and sterilized 18 half pint jars, lids and rings, but ended up only using 17 of them. You might end up with 18. It could happen–you never know.

AND now, let’s talk about pectin.

Pectin is a surprisingly sore subject with lots of folks who make jams, jellies, preserves and marmalade out there in the food blogging world, because apparently there is a contingent of “preservistas” who think you just suck the big wang if you use any kind of pectin to get your jams to gel and will get all huffy and be like, holier than thou about it.

I say “horse-hockey.” If you want to use pectin, use pectin. If you don’t, don’t. But I will tell you what–my Grandma made literally gallons of the clearest, most delicious wild blackberry jelly in the world–we’d literally pick the tiny seedy things in five gallon buckets so she could extract enough juice–and she used pectin.

If it was good enough for Grandma, then it’s good enough for me.

Look, pectin isn’t evil. It isn’t artificial, and the use of it doesn’t denote that you’re a bad jammer. It’s nothing more than a substance that exists in fruits in their natural state, that when placed in the presence of sugar and heat, causes your liquidy fruit juice to turn into a nice, thick gel. That’s all. It’s not extracted from a cow’s stomach or made out of plastic. It’s fine and dandy, and I use it, and you can, too.

That all said, I tried out a new to me pectin today and am a convert to what I see is the pectin of choice for all the food blogging world. That would be Pomona’s Universal Pectin, and instead of relying upon sugar to make it do it’s job and make a gel, it utilizes calcium.

Now, before you start frothing at the mouth about the calcium, remember, you need it for strong bones and teeth, so hush and listen. Pomona’s is made from citrus peels–again–nothing bad there–and it has two packets in each box. One contains the powdered pectin and the other has the calcium powder. You can tell them apart because the calcium is in the tiny packet.

Before you start jammin,’ though, you need to make calcium water, and Pomona’s has directions on how to do it right in the box. You just mix 1/2 teaspoon of the calcium powder with 1/2 cup of water in a small clean jar with a lid. You use the directed amount for your recipe and the rest you can keep sealed up in your fridge for the next time you haul off and preserve some fruit for winter.

After you do that, you can start jammin’ with impunity. All you do to make cooked low-sugar jam (AH HA! Now you know why I like Pomona’s Universal Pectin. I can make low-sugar jams that taste great and gel exactly the way I want them to!) is mix the mashed up fruit with the directed amount of calcium water and lemon juice if you need it to balance the flavors, and bring that mixture to a boil. Meanwhile, you measure out your sugar, stir the pectin in completely, and when the fruit boils, you stir in the sugar, and keep stirring for about two minutes while the lovely scented fruit mixture bubbles happily away. This makes certain you dissolve the pectin thoroughly into the fruit and juice. You bring it back to a boil, then remove it completely from the heat and pack your jars. Then you use your hot water bath canner and process it in boiling water for ten minutes, then take the jars out and sit them on a towel to cool off and seal properly. And voila! Jam.

It really is easy.

And it gels up much better than the regular grocery store brands of pectin that I’ve used for years. It’s more reliable, from what I can tell.

So, finally, we get to the recipe for the jam pictured above. It’s very simple, it uses Pomona’s Universal Pectin, which you can get at local natural food stores, Whole Foods or online.

Once again, if you want to remove the seeds, keep in mind you will have to have picked more berries. For my recipe, I got 2 mashed cups of fruit from each quart of whole berries–if you remove the seeds, it will be a much smaller ratio of fruit. Think about that while you are picking or buying berries.

Summer Blackberry Jam
Ingredients:

10 cups fresh blackberries, washed, picked over and mashed
5 teaspoons calcium water
5 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
5 cups sugar
6 teaspoons Pomona Universal Pectin
1 1/2 tablespoons Cortas rosewater

Method:

Put the fruit, calcium water, and lemon juice into a heavy-bottomed pot on a medium low fire and bring to a boil.

While the fruit is heating, stir together the sugar and pectin quite thoroughly. After the fruit mixture boils, add the butter and sugar/pectin mixture all at once and stir the still bubbling fruit for at least two minutes to ensure that the pectin and sugar dissolve thoroughly.

Bring back to the boil and after it boils, stir in the rosewater thoroughly, then remove from the heat and ladle the hot jam into jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headpace. Fit a flat lid and then add the screw lid, making the ring tight.

Process in a hot water bath for ten minutes under fiercely boiling water. Remove from canner, set on a folded towel on the countertop, and leave undisturbed for twelve hours.

As mentioned before, have 18 half pint jars ready. I only needed 17, but I had quite a few scrapings and tastings before I packed the jars, so I might have had enough before Kat, Zak and I started taste testing it.

I’ve already posted two different version of Sichuan string beans–both of them dry fried. There’s the more traditional one with pork and a vegetarian variation.

There’s a reason I’ve done two different versions of the recipe–it’s one of my favorite Chinese dishes ever.

I’m in good company–it was also Zak’s Grandma Doris’ favorite Chinese dish.

There’s just something about the chewy texture of the beans with lightly crispy, browned exterior and the sweet, concentrated bean flavor (concentrated because dry frying cooks out most of the water in the beans) that is ultimately satisfying. Add Sichuan peppercorns, chilies, and preserved Sichuan vegetable–and it’s a beautiful combination of flavors, textures and colors.

So why am I posting a third version of it?

Because I can introduce you to another cooking technique, tell you about a great Sichuan restaurant in Columbus AND because I can write about a really good recipe all in one post. That’s why, so there.

First, about that Sichuan Restaurant in Columbus (2869 Olentangy River Road, next to Buckeye Bar & Grill). Zak and I read about it on alt.eats.columbus and after their ringing endorsement, we had to go and try it out.

So we did.

And it was GOOD.

In fact, it’s pretty much the best Sichuan food I’ve had since we moved away from Maryland that I didn’t cook my own self. Now, I have to admit, I like my own Ma Po Tofu better, but their Dry Fried Beef and Lamb with Fresh Chili and Cumin rock my world.

The last time we were there, we tried their “Mala String Beans,” which is their own variation on Sichuan Dry Fried String Beans.

The restaurant, however, didn’t dry fry the beans–they oil blanched them just until the skins of the beans wrinkled and crisped and there were only a couple of browned spots on the beans. Dry frying produces a smokier, more browned result–these beans were slightly juicier because more water was left in them, brighter green and with a slightly crisper texture.

They also had been cooked with thinly sliced fresh garlic, dried chili peppers and thinly sliced fresh chilies, with copious amounts of who Sichuan peppercorns sprinkled throughout. There was a tiny drizzle of soy sauce in the dish, and perhaps the tiniest sprinkling of sugar, but I am not positive about that.

They were addictive. Not too salty, not too sweet, not wet, not dry. Ringing with spices.

As Baby Bear of Goldilocks fame would say, they were “just right.”

So, of course, I had to try and make them at home.

And, as per usual, I had to go and meddle with the recipe somewhat to make it my own. Besides, I had about a quarter pound of King Family Farm bacon unused in my fridge that would be a shame to let go to waste.

But before we start into the recipe, let’s talk a bit about oil blanching.

Oil blanching is a technique used in Chinese cooking, primarily Cantonese and Sichuan cooking, to impart a special texture and flavor to the food that is cooked in this manner. It is an expensive technique, so it tends to be used more in festival foods, restaurant cooking, and banquet cookery, but it can be done in the home. I personally wouldn’t do it often myself–it uses too much oil for my own sense of health and a happy food budget, but it’s perfectly fine to do it every now and then.

Basically, using a wok, which means you will ultimately use less oil, you heat up enough oil to just cover the food you are blanching–you can do it in two or three batches if need be–and you heat it until a chopstick or a bit of the food you are cooking put into it foams up and boils merrily away in the oil. I heat the oil on medium heat to keep it from smoking and starting to break down–it takes a wee bit longer that way, but you end up with a better tasting end result.

For this recipe, I used about 3/4 inch of oil in the bottom of my wok. It was just enough to cover my string beans and have them float without crowding themselves in the oil.

After it’s heated up, you add the food you are going to cook–and before you add it you make certain it’s perfectly dry on the outside unless you like sputtering oil spattered all over yourself and your kitchen–and stir it with a chopstick to break it all up and distribute it evenly.

Then you let it cook until it’s just cooked through, remove it from the oil and drain it on paper towels. When you are finished with the oil–you can filter it and use it again, but after oil blanching any vegetable, you are better off discarding it because it’s full of liquid that has cooked out of the oil, and with the water in the oil, it won’t really cook anything well again. It also takes on a funny odor after a while.

But that’s all there is to oil blanching, which you need to know about to replicate this recipe.

Oh, one more thing–if you leave out the bacon, the result will taste more like what we had at Fortune. If you keep the bacon in and you aren’t a vegetarian, I bet you’ll be happier.

Sichuan String Beans with Bacon
Ingredients:

1 pound string beans, topped, tailed, snapped into bite sized pieces and washed, then dried thoroughly
enough peanut or canola oil to fill your wok up to about 3/4″ to 1″ deep
1/4 pound bacon, cut into thin slices
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and cut into paper-thin slices
3 scallions, white and light green parts, cleaned and thinly sliced on the bias
5 fresh red and green jalapeno peppers, cut into julienne slices
1 teaspoon whole sichuan peppercorns, picked over to remove stems and twigs
2 teaspoons thin soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
salt to taste

Method:

Put the oil into the wok and heat up on medium heat until a green bean dropped into the oil will immediately start bubbling and frothing away.

When it’s hot, add all the green beans at once, and using a bamboo chopstick, maneuver them around until they are distributed evenly in the oil without overlaying each other at all.

Cook, stirring with the chopstick now and again, until the color of the beans deepens and brightens, the skin wrinkles up and just begins to brown and crisp in a few spots on the edges. Fish the beans out with a skimmer, and drain on layers of paper towels.

Discard the oil, leaving a shiny, thin layer on the wok. Wipe the wok clean on the outside and put it on the heat again, and raise the flame to high.

Add the bacon to the wok and cook, stirring until it’s half done. Add the garlic, scallions, chilies and peppercorns at this time and cook, stirring until the bacon is done and the garlic and scallions are golden brown. Add the beans back in and cook, stirring, one more minute.

Turn off the heat, add the soy sauce and sesame oil, and sprinkle in salt to taste–probably about a pinch will do.

Serve immediately with steamed rice. It goes beautifully with Ma Po Tofu.

But in the summer, when sweet corn is young, full of sugary plump kernels, bursting with flavor, we eat it like a vegetable.

And generally in the summer, we eat it on the cob.

Why?

Well, it’s more fun that way. Whether boiled, roasted, grilled or deep fried, corn on the cob is a hands-on, messy, joyful summer bundle of gustatory joy that I would never deny anyone. It’s just plain old wonderful.

But sometimes, (not very often) every now and then, you want something different.

And that’s when it’s time to cut corn from the cob and caramelize it.

Yep. Caramelize it.

Cook it in a nice hot saute pan until the sugars brown and the edges get a tiny bit crispy, while the inside of the kernel is chewy, yet still juicy.

Let me tell you, that’s some mighty fine eatin,’ as one of my uncles on the farm used to say. It isn’t as messy as corn on the cob to eat (though getting the kernels off the cob entails a wee bit of mess-making), but it is bursting with flavor.

This version I’m giving you here is vegetarian, made with vegetable broth, but I’ve also made a richer version with beef stock in it. I like them both–the vegetarian version is lighter with a more pure corn flavor–the beef broth gives a darker, deeper flavor, with the meatiness contrasting beautifully with the browned sugars of the corn.

I meant this to be done as a side dish, but you know, if you have some cooked and drained black beans, you could add those, and maybe even a sprinkling of shredded extra sharp or smoked cheddar cheese to make a light but still satisfying vegan or vegetarian main dish. I reckon that if you had some rendered bacon fat sitting in your fridge or you wanted to add some chopped cooked bacon to the dish you could, though it would ruin the corn for your vegetarian and Muslim friends, so don’t do that. Certainly not this close to Ramadan, right?

Suffice to say, this is a versatile enough recipe you could make all sorts of variations to your own taste. The only necessary ingredients are the butter or olive oil, the onions and garlic, salt, pepper, corn and broth. After that, the additional ingredients are up to the contents of your refrigerator, panty, spice cabinet and your imagination.

Let me know what you come up with when you make this–I’d love to hear what goodies you add to this very simple corn recipe.

Oh, and one more thing–use the freshest sweet corn possible. The sugars in corn convert to starch as soon as the ear is torn from the stalk. The more sugar that’s in your corn, the more caramelization you can achieve when you cook it and the better it will taste. If you use starchy corn that’s a week old or more, you’ll have to -add- sugar to it to make it come close to tasting as good as it should. So, avoid that by just using corn that is no more than three days old, if possible.

Caramelized Sweet Corn
Ingredients:

1/2 dozen ears corn, shucked and de-silked
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled, cut in half and then sliced very thinly
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-2 cloves garlic minced
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2-3/4 cup vegetable broth
roughly chopped fresh cilantro, parsley or basil for garnish

Method:

Cut the corn from the cob. This is somewhat tricky and a bit messy, and you’ll likely miss a few kernels here and there, but you can do it. My Grandma always did it this way, even when she was freezing corn for the winter, when we processed corn by the bushel, and she never cut herself or anything else except the corn. Eventually, Grandpa did make her a more efficient corn cutter, but that was after I was seven years old or so and she’d been cutting it with a knife before that for something like thirty years.

Basically, you hold the corn on a cutting board or inside a wide, shallow bowl, vertical, with the pointy end in one hand, and the flat end where it attached to the stalk held firmly against the board or bowl. I tend to use a bowl–it keeps the kernels from scattering hither and yon all over the cutting board and countertop and on my chest, when I’m cutting it. But Grandma always just used her cutting board.

Using a sharp knife of any sort you like–I use a chef’s knife, Grandma used a butcher knife and my mother used a paring knife–the shape and type matters less than it’s sturdiness and sharpness–carefully start at the top of the cob, and with a slight sawing motion, cut down the entire cob. This should separate the kernels from the cob. Don’t cut too deeply–you’ll get cob bits–but don’t cut too shallowly–then you leave lots of kernel on the cob. Practice will help you get it right–and you’ll find that depending on the width of your knife blade, you can cut up to three or four rows of kernels off at a time.

Continue around the corn until as many kernels as possible have been separated from the cob.

When you are done, wash your hands and knife well–they’ll be sticky with corn juice.

In a medium sized heavy bottomed saute pan, heat the butter or oil on medium heat until the butter melts and foams or the oil ripples and shimmers. Add the sliced onion and sprinkle well with the salt. Cook, stirring, until the onion is medium golden colored. Add the garlic and cook for one more minute, until the garlic is fragrant and beginning to turn golden at the edges.

Add the corn kernels all at once and turn the heat down to medium low and cook, stirring, until the onions turn deep golden brown and the corn has started browning well around the edges. Add black pepper to taste and keep cooking and stirring, until the corn is showing a great deal of golden brown color and everything smells browned and delicious. (There should also be brown bits of sugar and starch clinging to the bottom and sides of the pan at this time.)

Deglaze the pan with the broth, cooking and stirring, scraping every bit of the browned goodness from the bottom of the pan. Cook, stirring, until almost all of the broth is evaporated, and the corn is shiny and uniformly golden brown.

Garnish with roughly chopped herbs, and serve immediately. Feeds about three or four adults as a good side dish.

Which meant I made it only out of Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil. And I eschewed pestos made of other, untraditional herbs, cheeses and greens as being inferior copies of a perfect Italian sauce. Pesto was only made of Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil, and just because someone ground up some green herbs, something cheesy and some garlic and olive oil together in a food processor did not mean they could or should call it pesto. It was really just some tasty green stuff that needed a name other than pesto, because it wasn’t pesto.

(You must forgive me for my rigidity–I’d been reading a lot of Marcella Hazan, and she really is a pesto purist.)

And then, I started adulterating it with heavy cream, because I found that the addition of cream slowed down the natural oxidation that causes the emerald green sauce to turn brown, and eventually black very soon after it’s added to hot pasta or whatever else you put it on. The addition of cream is not a method approved by Harold McGee, the great explainer of all questions culinary, but I found I liked it better than his suggestion to cook the pasta in acidulated water, which results in tart pasta (blech), or his belief that if you just use leaves and no stems or flowers bracts, the pesto will not darken (it still does, just more slowly), or his assertion that if you use pine nuts instead of walnuts, it doesn’t darken as much. The problem was that I used pine nuts in the first place and as soon as the oil is ground up with the basil leaves, the leaves oxidize and that’s just all there is to it.

So, I started adulterating the pesto. For some reason that I do not quite understand, except that perhaps the cream seals out the oxygen by coating the tiny basil leaf pieces, the addition of cream slows oxidation so much that it is essentially is no longer a problem. It keeps it brilliant green all through the length of an average meal.

But one adulteration leads to another, as most adventurous cooks already know.

I took to adding some raw spinach leaves to the food processor–about 1/10th of the total volume of the basil leaves–along with adding the reduced cream at the end. This resulted in a very green pesto that had a luxurious velvety mouthfeel thanks to the cream and still tasted of supremely fresh garlic and basil.

Then, I started reacting badly to tree nuts, and away the very expensive pine nuts went.

No one noticed. The pesto still tasted mighty amazing.

So, I took to adding some Aleppo chili flakes instead of black pepper and some Thai basil and lemon basil along with the regular Genovese basil that I had used for years.

At this point, I had dipped my toe into the heresies of unconventional pesto-making far enough, that I decided to jump in feet first and just go all the way.

What tipped me over the edge was a taste of some cilantro pesto that John Gutekanst of Avalanche Pizza had to dip some of his amazing bread he sells at the Athens Farmer’s Market on Saturdays. It was green, glorious and good, popping with fresh flavor that any cilantro and garlic lover would crave, but I still hated calling it pesto.

But what to call it? “I dunno, lad, but it’s green,” (Star Trek Geek points to the reader who knows who says this in what episode and in what context) is way too long of a name for a foodstuff, so I gave up and just call it Cilantro Pesto.

But mine is very different from John’s.

I figured if I was going off the chain and putting cilantro in pesto, I might as well just throw in whatever I felt like, and not be constrained by what other people might think was right and proper. Besides, I was already risking the wrath of Marcella Hazan, so I might as well go down with a happy tongue and a full stomach, right?

So, I added a few other herbs. Some basil. Thai basil. Some Italian parsley. A wee pinch of fresh spearmint. The greens of a scallion.

And, I put some other green things in–like a kale leaf for bitterness and some spinach leaves for color and vitamins.

And I left the Parmesan cheese out and replaced it with two year old super-sharp white cheddar made right her in Ohio.

And Aleppo pepper flakes. And, a smidge of black peppercorns.

Of course, garlic, but also a bit of scallion bottom–the white oniony bit.

And finally–olive oil.

No nuts. Sadly. I would have tossed in some black walnuts otherwise, because their assertive somewhat musky flavor and sweetness would have complimented the cilantro perfectly.

So, what did I use my wicked, subversive, heretical pesto on?

Well, I first used it as a condiment on a cheeseburger. And it was wonderful.

It’s also good on grilled chicken, as a bread dip and I bet it would make a great pizza sauce with toppings of fresh heirloom tomatoes, roasted red peppers and fried eggplant. It’s great mixed in scrambled eggs, though it does make them, well, a wee bit verdant-looking. So, if you are unlike Sam-I-Am and you do not like green eggs and ham, don’t put this pesto in your eggs.

But my favorite use has been to melt it on some just browned sauteed zucchini or yellow summer squash. Stirred up with the sweetly caramelized squash, it’s just rich, gooey, nummy and good.

Well, anyway, here’s the recipe. It’s super-easy and can be frozen for up to four months and thawed with no ill effects.

Oh, and unlike basil pesto–it doesn’t oxidize easily–so no need for the cream. (But, of course, you can add it to a cream sauce if you like…..)

Cilantro Pesto
Ingredients:

3 cups tightly packed fresh cilantro leaves and fine stems, washed and well dried
1 3″ sprig of Thai basil leaves, removed from stem, washed and well dried
1 crown of Italian basil leaves (just the leaves at the tip of a branch–works out to about four leaves) washed and well dried
1/8 cup Italian parsley leaves, washed and well dried
4 mint leaves
light and dark green top of 1 scallion
2 kale leaves, big vein removed, washed and well dried
1/4 cup packed fresh raw baby spinach leaves, washed and well dried, big stems removed
1/4 cup two year old (or older if you have it) very sharp cheddar
1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
1/2 of the white of 1 scallion
head of garlic, cloves peeled and cut into chunks
olive oil as needed to make a sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Put all ingredients up to and including the garlic cloves into the bowl of a food processor.

Put the lid on the food processor and start it running. Drizzle olive oil slowly into the feed tube and continue until the ingredients coalesce into a finely ground, thick barely pourable sauce.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and go to town figuring out your favorite way to use this gregariously green stuff.

Note: If you want to make this vegan, replace the cheese with one good tablespoonful of white or shiro miso. I like Miso Master brand. Be careful with your salt addition if you use the miso though.

Eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables of all time.

Even though, when I was growing up, it only appeared on my Grandma or Mom’s tables fried with marinara sauce (and there’s nothing wrong with that, mind you), fairly early on in life I was introduced to moussaka and baba ganoush through Mom’s Greek friends, Pete and Sylvia, and my Aunt Nancy, who’s half Syrian, and loved all sorts of eggplant-based goodies. (Half Syrian, half Portuguese, and ALL good. I love Aunt Nancy, who lovingly broadened my food horizons from a very early age, God bless her.) My Uncle George, Mom’s brother and Aunt Nancy’s husband, loved Eggplant Parmesan so much that it was the only thing he ordered at Joe Fazio’s when we went out to celebrate his birthday, but even so, he’d let me have a bite to try it when I was very, very small. Fried eggplant, great marinara and melted mozzarella cheese–what’s not to love?

But, when I was younger, the only eggplant I knew about or ate was the Rubenesque deep violet aubergines that are commonly grown throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions. I’d never heard of, or even seen one of the long, thin, pale violet colored Asian Eggplants that are now fairly commonly seen in farmer’s markets, Asian markets and even some regular old grocery stores around the US.

They don’t even really look like eggplants being that they aren’t egg shaped, but are instead slender and curved, like long, stretched out teardrops. Most commonly they are either deep purple, like their plump cousins, or a pretty rosy violet color, but sometimes they are white, or striped violet and white or even a pretty mint green.

No matter what color these pretty Asian eggplants are, they have several things in common. One, when picked young, they have very few seeds. Two, they almost all lack any of the bitterness which can sometimes plague the more common chubby eggplants, and so never need to be pre-treated with salt. Three, they do share the ability to act as sponges with their larger cousins, and so are very good at taking up and holding flavorful sauces and oils.

They are used in the cuisines of China, Japan and Thailand, where their abilities to soak up flavor is used to great effect. In Japan, they are grilled with a miso marinade, in Thailand they are cooked in coconut milk-based curries, and in China, they can be either deep fried or stir fried then served in a sauce.

My personal favorite is a Sichuan dish where thin slices or slender shreds of young Asian eggplant are stir fried with minced pork and served with what is technically called, “Fish Flavored Sauce,” but which is usually translated into English as “Garlic Sauce.” The eggplant is soft and slippery and bathed in the darkly sweet, hot, tangy sauce, while the minced pork bits are sweet and a bit chewy. Sometimes shreds or slices of fresh water chestnut are used to add crispness and a shattering sugar flavor to the dish, but I’ve most often had it in restaurants with just the eggplant and pork.

Eggplants are madly in season right now–there are piles of them in all shapes, sizes and colors at the Farmer’s Market these days, so I picked up a couple of the little Asian ones to add to some stir fry or another.

It wasn’t until I was digging around in the vegetable drawer to find something for dinner a couple of nights later that I came up with this dish which is a twist on the traditional Sichuan Eggplant with Pork and Garlic Sauce that I love, but seldom find in restaurants. Lacking fresh water chestnuts, I came upon some beautiful green beans and decided to use those to make a crispy counterpoint to the richly soft and unctuous eggplant.

Since the green beans are long and thin, I decided to cut the eggplant into shreds to match the shape of the beans. According to Chinese culinary traditions, matching the shapes of your ingredients is a more aesthetic way to cook, and it ensures that foods cook evenly in the wok. Cutting Asian eggplants into shreds is simple–just cut the fruits into steeply diagonal 1/4″ thick slices so that you are making long ovals, then stack the slices and cut those into 1/4″ wide shreds. Voila–simplicity itself.

Instead of mincing the pork tenderloin (which is what I had), I shredded it as well–by cutting it into slices against the grain, and then cutting each slice into a 1/4″ thick shred.

When it came to cooking the dish–I put the eggplant into the wok not long after the pork so it had plenty of time to soak up the flavors of the minced scallion, garlic and ginger that is put into the wok on top of the pork. Basically, I waited until the pork was half cooked–the colors showing were equal parts brown and pink–before tossing in the eggplant, and then stir fried as normal, putting in the blanched green beans when most of the pork shows brown instead of pink. Then, in went the already blended sauce components, and within about a minute and a half, the sauce is reduced and thickened, everything is cooked through and all that is needed is a sprinkling of scallion tops to bring everything to a delicious finish.

How did it taste?

Amazing. Using green beans in a dish of eggplant and pork with garlic sauce may not be traditional, but I don’t care, because it’s damned good. Zak said it was one of the best things I’ve cooked in a long while, and he and I and Kat pretty much ate the entire platter in one sitting.

Mind you, I said almost. There was also enough left over the next morning for a nice cold topping over warmed over rice for breakfast.

And yeah, it makes a great breakfast, too.

Eggplant, Pork and Green Beans with Garlic Sauce
Ingredients:

2 tbsp. rice vinegar
2 tbsp. black rice vinegar
2 tbsp. dark soy sauce
1 tbsp. Shao Hsing wine
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. chili garlic paste
1/4 tsp. sesame oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
1/2 pound pork tenderloin, shredded as explained above, then tossed with 1 teaspoon Shao Hsing wine or sherry and 1 tablespoon cornstarch (about 2 cups after cutting)
5 large garlic cloves, minced
4 scallions, white and light green parts only, minced
1″ cube fresh ginger, minced
2 small young Asian eggplants, shredded as directed above–about 2 cups after cutting
1 1/2 cups young green beans, stringed and blanched then drained
dark green tops of the 4 scallions up above, sliced thinly on the diagonal for garnish

Method:

Stir together the first eight ingredients–from the vinegar to the cornstarch–in a small cup or bowl until well combined. Set aside.

Heat wok over a burner on high until a thin ribbon of smoke spirals up from the steel or iron surface. Pour in the canola or peanut oil and heat for another 30-60 seconds, until the oil shimmers and moves lightly over the surface of the wok.

Add the pork in one layer and allow to sit on the surface of the wok, undisturbed, for a minute, or until the meat browns well on the bottom side. As soon as the pork is settled into the wok and arranged so it can brown, sprinkle the minced scallion, garlic and ginger evenly over the meat, then sprinkle the eggplant evenly over that.

Once the meat is well browned on the bottom, stir and fry until most of the meat is brown with only a little bit of pink showing. Some of the aromatic bits will likely stick to the wok, but don’t worry over that much. Add the green beans and stir fry for about ten seconds, then pour in the sauce ingredients, and cook, stirring and scraping until the sauce boils and thickens and everything is fragrant and cooked through.

Stir in the scallion tops, and remove from heat. Scrape into a heated platter and serve immediately with steamed rice.