midweek gems #35: Smoky spiced eggplant for dinner, lunch, and snacks
+ front porch refresh + SF culinary rummage sale + chicken skewers
Hello everyone!
DOH — soon after last weekend’s grilled lamb steak in spicy herb marinade went out to you, Alex R alerted me to the fact that I’d failed to include the recipe PDF. It’s uploaded now so you’ve got the whole shebang. (Thanks, Alex, for watching my back.)
Also new to that recipe are pointers using the utterly easy and tasty marinade for chicken skewers. I test drove it on a half batch for dinner the other day and can attest to its worthiness in your life. A 24-hour marinade does no harm to the flesh so meal prep away! Head to the grilled lamb steak in spicy-herb marinade recipe for the PDF and chicken skewer info.
💎 Gujarati-style eggplant (olo) recipe
I recently mentioned a splendid eggplant that I’ve been making to go with not just Indian meals but also to spread on banh mi, tortillas, or to eat as a dip. It’s called olo, a Gujarati eggplant that’s smoky and intricately spiced. The recipe is by Vishweth Bhatt in his award-winning book, I Am From Here: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Chef. His evocative recipe headnote hooked me:
This is my mother’s family recipe. Every fall, we used to visit my maternal grandmother and spend a week at her home in the countryside. Grandma cooked this mashed eggplant, which is called Olo in Gujarati, with much fanfare every time we visited. My uncles would visit nearby farms to pick just the right eggplants dig up green garlic and pluck chili peppers. Often I went with them— with the house full of guests, it gave grandma a little break. When we returned home, mom and grandma would supervise as the uncles built a fire with acacia wood and hay. Once the fire had burnt down to embers, the women would roast the eggplants until they were charred and soft. While the eggplant cooked, they would pulverize green garlic, and ginger in a mortar and pestle and chopped green chilies. They cleaned and mashed the smoked eggplant and folded it together with sautéed garlic, ginger, chilies, mustard seeds, and garam masala.
We would all sit down on the veranda and eat the olo with millet flatbread, cooked in a concave clay griddle over the fire. Also, on the table were raw green onions with a squeeze of lime, mango or olive pickles, yogurt, and freshly churned butter. We’d wash it all down with glasses of fresh buttermilk.
When I make Olo at home in Oxford, I no longer light a fire, but use the grill instead. I serve the eggplant as a side dish, functioning usually with something else that has been cooked on the grill . . . Thousands of miles on my grandmother’s home, it still reminds me of her.
I made the recipe twice in 2 weeks, tweaking with little shortcuts to make it fit my preferences. Get Vish’s eggplant recipe and my pointers here.
💎 SF 7/19 culinary rummage sale
In San Francisco this Saturday? Stop by the first rummage sale by the SF chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. I’m a member and know that we’ve gathered an amazing collection of items — from vintage tableware to cookware to cookbooks and more.
There will be snacks and beverages for sale to power you through your shopping. The dames are a good group and the proceeds will aid women forward their careers in food. More about Les Dames SF here.
💎 Front porch refresh
About a month ago, I told Rory I wanted to redo on our front porch — a yucky embarrassment that we’d left to get full of cobwebs. It had been about five years since we’d really cared for it. We realized that when the coronavirus shutdown happened, we also shut down the threshold to our home. We moved the settee and matching table from the public facing porch to the private backyard. The space sat empty like this for years.
It’s bugged us but we didn’t know what to do with it until recently. Refreshing the space didn’t require construction. We scrubbed and redecorated.
We have so much stuff and this was a way to use treasures we already had in the house, garage, and backyard. We didn’t get to appreciate them enough when they were squished here and there. But now we see them in a different context and remember why they charmed us to begin with.
New things we did buy included: an oval outdoor rug to redefine the rectangular space (rugs.com is surprisingly good); a metal table from a consignment shop that echoed the wall hanging and focused the eye; a Majesty palm from Home Depot to lend bushy height; and a fern from Trader Joe’s for color and texture. The new acquisitions totaled $400.
Before things got placed, we power washed the deck and removed cobwebs from the ceiling and rafters. On Sunday, our actual anniversary, I touched up the steps leading up to the porch.
I shared the “After” photos with friends who’d come to our home and one said, “Where is that?” We learned a valuable lesson in repurposing things we have and moving them around.
What’s your summer project or a recent home redo tip?
We just finished eating a Southern Vietnamese tamarind stir-fry that yielded this response from Rory: “This is soooo good.” You’d think that I make him starve all the time! Ha.
Anyway, please excuse me because I need to go write up all the details for this coming Sunday Special. Join us if you’ve been on the fence!
