sun-dried eggplant
a recipe to all the boys i’ve loved before.
(or alternatively subtitled , a poignant recipe-metaphor for my summer life crisis.)
Active Time: ~30 mins (+ 24-48 hours of drying time)
Servings: approx. 1 sun-dried eggplant = 2 servings
Ingredients
asian eggplant
sun!
Slice eggplant, starting as close as to the stem as possible lengthwise. You should end up with ~10-12 slices. Each slice should be approximately 1.5-2cm wide. I like to slice first into quarters lengthwise and then slice each quarter into thirds lengthwise.
Eggplant will dry faster in the sun if you cut thinner slices. It will also make your life easier when you later rehydrate and cook the eggplant so that you don’t have the cut the eggplant into thinner slices. Just do the work ahead of time.
Make sure to cut as close to the stem as possible but not too close. The stem is quite chonky, so you want to expose as much surface area to the air as possible. If you don’t slice close to the stem, I noticed that mold grows because of the residual moisture. But again, not too close because you still want enough of the head to hang. (If you know that you are using a sheet pan and not twine–read the next step–you could chop the stem off entirely.)
How to dry eggplant: Find a spot on your yard, patio, or roof that is laden with direct sunlight. Either hang eggplant using kitchen twine/yarn/rope or lay eggplant on a sheet pan.
My grandma uses the sheet pan method. I use the hanging method.
Return in 24-48 hours. If completely dry from tip to the stem, remove. Cut the stem off to prevent any mold growth. (If there is any moisture left, it is most likely retained in the stem.) Then cut the slivers into 2 inch matchsticks. Store in an airtight container.
In Los Angeles–dry heat–it takes 24 hrs to dry. In NYC–humid heat–the eggplant takes 48 hrs to dry completely.
See try experimenting with to learn how to rehydrate and cook sun-dried eggplant.
For videos detailing process, see IG post here or see IG Reel tutorial here.
Voila vegetables!
Non-negotiables
Asian eggplant – Asian eggplant–the longer and more slender variety–is less bitter and sweeter. Thus, it does not need to be blanched or salted before drying to make it more palatable.
Try experimenting with
How to store — I do not know how long the sun-dried eggplant keeps because I usually use it within a week. I read though that Italian nonnas dry their summer eggplant and will keep it through the winter. I also read that Italian nonnas will salt the eggplant first to preserve its color, but I found the eggplant still retained a midnight purple color once dried. Perhaps this is a difference between using Italian v. Asian eggplant.
Sun-dried tomatoes are packaged dry air-tight or in jars of evoo. Perhaps you could store the sun-dried eggplant in evoo as well?
How to cook — Before you try experimenting, you probably want to know what the sun-dried eggplant tastes like. The drying process creates a meaty texture and concentrates its vegetal taste almost to a smokiness. Its flavor and texture profile honestly makes it my ideal plant-based meat substitute with which to experiment. First, just rehydrate the eggplant for 20 minutes in a bowl of water. Heat oil on medium, add eggplant to pan, and then….
make banchan! (What is banchan?) Season to taste, using at least 2 cloves of garlic (because what does only 1 clove of garlic actually do), ginger, and honey (or any sweetener). Once the eggplant is cooked through, add splash of soy sauce. (Adding soy sauce at the end ensures the soy sauce doesn’t burn on the pan.) Turn off the heat. Deglaze with mirin or rice wine vinegar. Toss in a little sesame oil, sprinkle of white sesame, and cut scallions.
….or you can just follow my grandma’s instructions from the family group chat.
ground or minced meat substitute! Chop the eggplant into smaller pieces to resemble minced/ground meat. Use in Szeuchan mapo tofu? Taiwainese fly’s head? Italian bolognese?
Turkish dolmas? When googling dried eggplant, SEO gave me Turkish dolmas as the top 5 hits. These look amazing…it looks like you would have to cut the eggplant differently into shells though?
Food styling tips
I prefer to dry the by the hanging method for the catharsis and drama. The sliced phallus hanging by a thread looks darkly cinematic. The forgotten leftovers of witchcraft cast the night before. A voodoo doll, forewarning the fate of the last man who crossed me. A threat of castration–”do not play with me or else.”
Koreans have some aesthetic infatuation with julienning vegetables into 2-inch long matchsticks. Think japchae, bulgogi, kimbap…. And so I cut the sun-dried eggplant into 2-inch matchsticks.
Banchan is traditionally served in several little dishes. Several little dishes allow you to play with flatlay composition shot.
If you’re serving as a salad, go for height. Create a mound of arugula, and arrange the eggplant into a pointed top! If I can plate this 20 times, you can too.
The eggplant sautes beautifully with golden lines and blackened stripes. Add shine with a drizzle of sesame oil and sprinkle sesame seeds for a small pop. The layers of textures will look very complex on a macro shot.
Recipe Development
I went home in June for two weeks with intentions of spending as much time with my grandma. She is always so eager to feed me new banchan that she learned how to make from the Internet. Because she spent most of her life working, my grandma only learned how to cook once she retired in the mid 2000s. She learned how to cook in a similar manner that a younger generation has learned how to cook—through short-form "cooking hack” videos sent along text message chains, YouTube videos, and online recipe cards.
One of the first new banchans she fed me was sun-dried eggplant. I was so intrigued by its texture and taste—jerky-like but vegetal. She said she dried it on her patio on sheet pans—just like “the Youtube.” I knew I had to try for myself.
Test #1, mid-July 2021 - Back in NYC, I experimented with a single eggplant. I decided to hang the eggplant because I wouldn’t have enough sheet pans once I scaled up to a pop up quantity (10-15 eggplants). I started later in the afternoon on the first day, so it took a half afternoon, a full day, and then another half afternoon. The following day, I rehydrated and sauteed according to my grandma’s directions. Cooking with my own intuition, I deglazed with mirin and added a lemon squeeze. Voila—dinner for me and my roomie <3
What I did right - The eggplant ends dried beautifully and retained its color without any salt or blanching.. (I had read that Italian nonnas will blanch or salt the eggplant prior to drying to preserve its midnight color. I didn’t understand, however, why one would introduce more moisture into the eggplant, thereby increasing the drying process and the possibility of mold.)
Needs improvement - I was hesitant to slice the eggplant too close to the stem since the stem is required to hang the eggplant. The stem wasn’t fully dried and I feel like I saw a little white fuzz, so I had to chop it off and just sauteed the slivered shaft. ;)
I would start the drying process in the morning, so that the process takes 48 hours over the course of two full days, not split a half day-full day-half day. I took in the eggplant at night because I was anxious the building facilities might fear for their lives. But I think next time I would just leave it out overnight.
Test #2, early August 2021 - I put sun-dried eggplant on the menu for my Dinner Party BK pop-up. I biked down to HK supermarket and bought 5llbs of eggplant, scaling test #1 by 10.
words of affirmation from grandma
On Sunday, August 7, I hosted a pop-up at Dinner Party BK in Fort Greene. My guests were all young, dynamic women…. except for one character that stood out in the dining room. He was a older, white male-presenting figure with a soft smile, wispy curls, and black, round glasses. We’ll call him Mysterious Diner–M.D. for short. M.D. arrived on a solo reservation. We seated him with a four-top of 3 young girls. He neatly cut his portion from the communal whole fish. In the back, we joked that he was a hot shot food critic–the type in which you know his name, but you don’t know his face. Making rounds to chat with guests during the main course, I asked how he heard about the event. He said that he heard about it via Dinner Party, had a recent life success, and wanted to take himself out to celebrate. He said that his favorite dish was the burdock root and sun-dried eggplant salad. From across the table, I told him how I had dried the eggplant on my roof earlier in the week. He leaned in closer. I tried to anunciate through the loud chatter coming from nearby tables. I couldn’t tell if my voice reached him. I would have repeated myself, but I was called back into the kitchen to prep pavlovas.
During dessert, I circled back around, curious to see if I could extract more information from M.D. Yet, my front-of-house duties functioned more like a live Q&A, where I was being peppered with questions by guests.
“Alex, are you always this cheerful?”
“No, I was ghosted by a boy last week.”
“How do you balance cooking and school?”
“Well, I have to eat.”
“Wait, what school are you in?”
“I’ll start my second year of med school in a couple weeks.”
M.D. then related that he was an actual M.D.--Doctor of Medicine. Checks were delivered to the table, and there was a pause in table talk. I went to the bar, making myself look busy. Mysterious Diner, M.D. finished his check, he stood up, and I approached him by the doorway. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to say to him, but I wanted to talk to him more. I started with a fairly benign professional question.
“Are you in private practice or do you work in a hospital?”
He shuddered at the mention of “private practice.” He worked in the public hospital system in Manhattan. I related that I see myself working with underserved patients, and then I started talking: how I’ve so desperately tried to compartmentalize my life into creative v. career, how I compare the joys of each compartment, how I’m struck with fear how different creative joys feel from career joys, and how I’m scared my creative life will end in January–when our clinical portion of curriculum starts.
Again, I was unsure if he could hear me as I had to lean closer toward him. The crowd quieted, but clanging from the kitchen grew louder as dishes were starting to be washed. He quickly responded, advising me to think of it all as the sun-dried eggplant.
“Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
Sensing my hesitancy, he continued. Fresh produce expires. But my eggplant can be dried in the sun and stored in the pantry until I’m ready to use it. It’s shelf-stable, waiting for me to tap into it again. It has taken in all the light of a sunny day, preserving all of the moment to be used whenever I decide. Just don’t forget it’s there.
I asked for his email, but he told me to just look his first name and child psychiatry. He was the only one with his name in his department at his hospital. I never reached out though. I was thankful for his serendipitous? ghostly? angelic? appearance at my dinner party, and I wanted to preserve the memory as such—a one-off, apparition because that his single entry and exit would make his advice more poignant, more pivotal.
No continuity of care was needed because he gave me a sense of peace–that someone identified my chief complaint, narrowed down his differential, and prescribed me sun-dried eggplant with a confident prognosis. A certain confidence that I’ve been desperate to find two summers in a row now–flirting with creative opportunities (recipe development, ceramics, zines, event planning, and pop-ups) but abandoning them come mid-August for school year.
I have reservations about his prescription. Sun-drying and jarring eggplants for a rainy day loses all the momentum of the sunny day. I’ve had people ask me, “Alex, when is the next dinner party? Alex, are you going to host another pop up? Alex, what’s your next move?” And I don’t have answers. Because I haven’t figure out how to summer into the fall. (Has anyone?)
So, what “needs improvement?” Maybe it’s not improvement, but reinvention. I’ve seen how EAC functions as archive for college cooking, then a happy place while living at home during my gap year, a silly addendum to my first year of medical school, and now flirtatious, full-time summer fling. I’ve learned this past year that I need to schedule EAC into my schedule or else it becomes an afterthought, posting while on the train or in 15 minutes before bed. I’ve refrained from scheduling EAC because scheduling gives it the legitimacy of a chore or actual work. But perhaps my reinvention concerns accepting that EAC is a legitimate “extension of my life.” (Quoting “extension of my life” from facetime I had with an old friend earlier this summer.) I’m not sure what kind of metaphor accommodates an “extension of my life,” but I’ll throw something together–voila vegetables.
If you decide to test this banchan, please tag me @everythingalexcooks,
(and I mean actually tag me, the new IG update doesn’t notify me when I simply get mentioned in a caption).
I want to see your creations and hear your thoughts!
