Kerry Guest Blogs About Eggplant

 My beautiful Baby Sister Kerry guest blogs about a fabulous Thai Eggplant dish! (while I procrastinate writing the pizza post for which I have scrumptious looking pictures...)

Tonight was my eggplant debut.  In 20 years of cooking, I had never once had the urge to cook an eggplant, or at least not enough of an urge to buy one, learn how to prepare one, and cook it to feed to others or myself.  But my new grocery store strategy has me buying random produce (and apparently blogging about it.)  This week brought in baby bok choy, celery root, fingerling potatoes, and one globe eggplant among other more usual purchases for our family. 

My other new culinary strategy at play is to incorporate the vegetables into the main dish, because vegetables on the side never taste good and are unappetizing.  So my solution to two dilemmas led me to a Thai curry tonight, with eggplant and chicken in a delicious coconut red curry sauce.  It was a resounding success.

One downside of my grocery strategy is that I never have the ingredients needed for a recipe, so I must basically adapt and create my own recipes to avoid grocery-shopping midweek.  Yes, it really should use fish sauce instead of soy sauce, but that was not in my fridge tonight; and yes, I served it on a bed of spaghetti.  But you know what, it was so good.  I now know that I can cook eggplant decently and that people who like eggplant will eat it.  (I do not know what it takes to convert an anti-eggplant-er.)  So I’ll share my recipe on the off chance that your grocery store has beautiful eggplants this week, and that you happen to have a can of lite coconut milk in your pantry, too. 

Thai Red Curry with Eggplant and Chicken

Canola oil

2 Onions, chopped

4 tsp. red curry paste

1 can lite coconut milk

2 C chicken broth

4 Tbs. soy sauce

2 Tbs. brown sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 medium/large globe eggplant, chopped in 1 inch cubes (purge with salt beforehand if you like, rinse and drain)

2 chicken breast halves, cut in bite-sized bits

4 Tbs. cornstarch mixed with 4 Tbs. cold water

splash of lemon juice

½ C. chopped cilantro

          rice or noodles

Cook the onions in a bit of canola oil until soft (5 minutes).  Add the curry paste and stir for a minute.  Add the coconut milk, broth, soy sauce, sugar and salt and bring to a boil.  Add the eggplant and simmer with the lid on for around 12 minutes.  Add the chicken and cook with the lid on 8 more minutes.  Add the cornstarch and water mixture and let bubble until thickened.  Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice and cilantro.  Serve over rice or noodles.  

- Kerry Schantz Held