Shubhra’s Fire Roasted Eggplant

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Shubhra Ramineni is a culinary instructor, busy mom of a veggie-loving girl and award-winning cookbook author of Entice with Spice, Easy Indian Recipes for Busy People and Healthy Indian Vegetarian Cooking, Easy Recipes for the Hurry Home Cook. Shubhra’s no-fuss cooking style recreates authentic Indian flavors using easy techniques and fresh and easily available ingredients.

 Shubhra has generously provided a  copy of her latest tome, Healthy Indian Vegetarian Cooking, Easy Recipes for the Hurry Home Cook for one lucky VegOut! participant who completes the 30-day challenge this March.

In the mean time, she’s shared one of her simple, yet elegant recipes to inspire you in your food adventure…

Shubhra's Fire Roasted Eggplant

Smoked eggplant is one of my favorite Indian dishes, and is fun to make! The eggplant, also known as brinjal in India, is roasted directly over the open flame on a gas stovetop. If you don’t have a gas stove, you could roast the eggplant under an oven broiler or cook it on an outdoor grill. If you use an oven broiler, it is not as messy, but you will not get the smoky taste that comes from cooking directly over an open flame. This dish can be served with naan or as an appetizer along with lightly toasted wedges of pita bread. – Shubhra

Fire Roasted Eggplant (Baingan Bhartha)

Serves 4

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes if using a gas stove
Refrigerator life: 3 days
Freezer life: 1 month
Reheating method:  Place the refrigerated or defrosted eggplant in a microwave and stir periodically. Or, place it in a saucepan over medium-low heat and stir periodically.

Ingredients

1 large eggplant, globe variety (about 1 lb/500 g)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil (plus 1 extra teaspoon oil if using an oven)
1 small onion, diced
1 fully ripe tomato, coarsely chopped
½ teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)
½ teaspoon salt 

Directions

On the stove:

  • If you’re using a gas stove to roast the eggplant, place aluminum foil under a large burner to make clean-up easier.  Wash and dry the eggplant.   Place the eggplant directly on the gas burner on high heat.  Using tongs, frequently turn the eggplant to make sure all sides are evenly cooked, about 8 minutes.  When done, the eggplant will become very soft and mushy. The skin will be charred, and it will have collapsed in on itself.  Also, some liquid will release the cooking process, which will be caught by the foil.  Remove from the heat and let cool. Discard the foil.
  • If you’re using your oven to roast the eggplant, preheat the broiler to high. Wash and dry the eggplant.  Rub 1 teaspoon of the oil on the eggplant so it will not dry out while cooking. Place the eggplant on a baking sheet on the highest rack possible near the broiler and turn frequently until the eggplant is evenly charred and the flesh is soft and mushy, about 25 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.
  • Using your fingers, peel the skin off the eggplant and discard.  After you have removed the skin, hold the eggplant over your sink by the stem with one hand.  Wet your other hand and very gently grab the eggplant and run your hand down it to help take off any small remaining bits of skin.
  • Place the eggplant in a shallow dish.  Holding the eggplant by the stem, use a potato masher to mash the eggplant flesh and break it apart.  (The stem will become separated from the eggplant flesh.  Do not discard the stem.)
  • Pour the oil into a medium saucepan and place over medium heat.  When the oil is heated, add the onion.  Sauté until the onion is lightly browned, stirring frequently, about 4 minutes.
  • Add the tomato.  Cook until the tomato pieces become soft, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes.   Add the mashed eggplant (including the stem and the juices), red pepper and salt. Stir to combine.  Cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  • Serve the eggplant on a platter, along with the stem, or let cool to room temperature and refrigerate or freeze for later!

On the grill:

  • Wash and dry the eggplant.   Heat a grill on medium-high heat.  When the grill is heated, place the eggplant directly on the grill rack.  Close the grill, and check back every 5 minutes to turn the eggplant.  Cook for a total of 20 minutes with the grill closed.  Cook until all four sides of the eggplant are soft and mushy.  Remove from grill and let cool.  Continue with steps 3 to 7. 

Recipe from Entice with Spice, Easy Indian Recipes for Busy People by Shubhra Ramineni. Learn more about Shubhra, her cookbooks and upcoming events and classes at enticewithspice.com.

Homemade Pasta + Turnip Soup

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ParkPlace-LemonPasta+TurnipSoup

Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ students at Park Place Elementary were thrilled to make lemony pasta from scratch to add to the turnip soup, which included turnips from their Recipe Garden!

Roasted Turnip Soup
Makes 8 servings

Turnips are not terribly popular, as they have a tendency to become bitter and watery if not cooked properly. The key to cooking turnips is to roast them! Like radishes, turnips become sweet and creamy when roasted, and when paired with leeks, garlic, they produce a fantastic soup. – S2P Instructor, Chef Priti

Ingredients
2 pounds turnips, cut into large dice
1 tablespoon oil
2 leeks, dark green part cut off, sliced in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock

Directions

  • Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toss turnips in oil, place on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 45 minutes.
  • In a large pot over medium-high heat, brown the butter with coriander seeds and caraway until fragrant. Add leeks, garlic and salt and cook until soft.
  • Add the turnips and stock, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to bring mixture to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
  • Transfer the hot mixture to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth.

Tip: To add a little bit of texture to the pureed soup, you can garnish with toasted walnuts or rye bread croutons.

How are YOU eating turnips during the VegOut! Challenge?

FLASH CONTEST: #VegOutVideo

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vegoutvideo

This week’s social media flash contest kicks up a notch with VIDEO SUBMISSIONS! Use your phone’s video function or your favorite movie app (Vine, Instagram, etc) to shoot and share a quick film of you vegging out, from dining on kohlrabi at a VegOut! HERE spot, whipping up an eggplant stirfry for dinner, or crunching some carrots at work. Camera shy? Get your kids to talk about the veggies they’re eating!

Post videos with the hashtags #VegOutVideo and #VegOutRFS to enter. Our fave flick wins Dinner for Two to Monica Pope’s Sparrow Bar + Cookshop. Remember, to qualify for contests, you must be registered for the 2014 VegOut! Challenge.

Entries are due by Wednesday, March 26, at 11.59 a.m. 

Veggies… camera… ACTION!

Our #VegOutJicama winner is…

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VegOutJicamaDishLast week, we asked you to submit your best photo of a jicama dish with us on social media with the hashtag #VegOutJicama for a chance to win our second VegOut! flash contest. Several of you rose to the challenge and share some inspired cuisine, so we asked Chef Jason Gould of Cyclone Anaya’s Mexican Kitchen to help us determine a winner.

After reviewing all the submissions, here’s what he had to say:

“These are some really good recipes with some great and unique uses for jicama, it was hard to choose just one winner. The one I picked is the “Sōté-rubbed Salmon with Hatch Pepper Sauce and Jicama-Mango Slaw”. It’s simple use of the jicama in the “slaw” really highlights the great qualities of the vegetable, helping to retain the crispness and complementing the flavor with the addition of the citrus and mango.  Served with the seared salmon and spicy Hatch pepper sauce, makes for a great spring dish.”

So congrats to Dragana Harris (aka the writer and home cook behind Dragana Bakes).  Enjoy the $50 gift card donated by the lovely folks at Cyclone Anaya’s.

Dragana has shared her recipe with us to help you veg out with jicama, too!

Sōté-Rubbed Salmon with Hatch Pepper Sauce & Jicama-Mango Slaw

Serves 2

Ingredients

For salmon:

¾ lb salmon fillet

Sōté seasoning or seasoning of your choice

1 tablespoon olive oil

For sauce:

¼ cup mayonnaise

¼ cup sour cream

1 roasted Hatch pepper (spicy or not), skin removed, stemmed and seeded

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

¼ cup lightly packed cilantro leaves

1 peeled and chopped Roma tomato

For jicama slaw:

½ lb jicama, peeled and julienned (use the mandoline for this if you have one)

1 mango, peeled, sliced thin and then longwise into thin strips

8 radishes, sliced thinly (here again, the mandoline comes in handy)

1/3 cup red onion, sliced thin

¼ cup cilantro, chopped

4 tablespoons fresh orange juice

4 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

  • Pat salmon dry with a paper towel to remove any moisture. Rub a little Sōté seasoning on the salmon, remembering that the Sōté is mostly salt.
  • Pour olive oil into an oven-proof pan or cast iron skillet. Heat pan over medium heat until the oil is very hot. Carefully add the salmon, skin side down. Cover with a splatter shield if necessary to prevent oil from splashing everywhere. Sauté salmon until the edges begin to turn color, about 5 – 6 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the broiler. Remove pan with salmon from heat and place under broiler for 2 minutes to sear the top. Remove pan from oven using an oven mitt. Serve with Hatch pepper green sauce and Jicama mango slaw.
  • Place all ingredients in a small blender and blend until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
  • Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Chill until ready to serve.  Serve using tongs to drain slaw from the juices.

See Dragana’s original post, plus more recipes and culinary tales on her blog, Dragana Bakes.

Sunchoke Cha Cha Cha!

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Bustling schedules and picky palettes can make the task of nourishing a family an uphill battle, so how do you get your brood to eat 30 different vegetables period, much less within one month?

Houston mom Amy Anton has stepped up for the challenge and is sharing her anxieties, discoveries and successes along the way.

new veggie

Have you ever had a sunchoke? I hadn’t even even heard of them until yesterday. And you probably don’t care, but I cook A LOT. I read cooking magazines all of the time. But still, I had no idea what a sunchoke was. Until yesterday, that is.

I was wandering through the produce section at my local H-E-B, when I saw a basket marked sunchokes. Say what? They are also known as Jerusalem Artichokes. Hmm, so obviously, they are some exotic version of an artichoke, I think… Not so! They are brown tubers, or root vegetables that look like a cross between ginger root and a small potato. Crazy!

I grabbed a bag of them and headed home, triumphant that I had a new vegetable for our Veggie Log. The story gets better, though, as we were having company for dinner. Perfect, I thought, they can all try sunchokes! Well, when I announced to my guests I had roasted sunchokes for them, you should have seen the look on their faces. I am sure they were thinking, she’s making us try some weird food… my husband looked disgusted… and the seven boys looked at me like no way, no how. It is spring break, and I am NOT eating anything weird!

Determined, I cut the sunchokes into bite-size pieces, tossed them with olive oil and salt, and roasted them in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. I snuck a bite of one before I served them, and WOW. Like a potato, but nutty, and not as starchy. And when I dished them out to everyone, you know what? They ALL loved them. They ate every last one! They asked for more! Boy, did I feel vindicated.

SO, if you are running out of new veggie ideas for your VegOut! Challenge (or your sanity), grab some sunchokes! They are in season right now, and I have seen them at Kroger, H-E-B, Central Market, and Whole Foods Market.