Spicy Sesame Eggplant

I love eggplant.
When I was up visiting my sister a couple weeks ago in DC, she made the most delicious stir-fry where she roasted the eggplant before mixing it with the other vegetables.
The marinade she used on the eggplant was so delicious.
I was hoping I could recreate it somehow.

I found a couple of beautiful baby eggplants recently and wanted to roast them. I found a recipe that was pretty close to the marinade- I just added a couple Tbls of soy sauce.

The eggplant is good enough to eat right off the baking sheet, but I did make sure that some of it ended up on top of quinoa, where is was joined by some blanched broccoli.
I didn't have any sesame seeds, so those were left off, but this was still very tasty.



Recipe for Spicy Sesame Eggplant
*I added a couple Tbls of soy sauce
* I reduced the amount of chili paste by a bit to make this ok for my kids

Pork (Turkey) Meatball Banh Mi

I have developed a "like" for spicy food. It has been fairly recently that I have enjoyed spicy food more than I used to.

This is one spicy sandwich.

I have never had a Banh Mi, so I am definitely not an expert on what they are supposed to look like or taste like. I saw this recipe for a Meatball Banh Mi in a recent issue of Bon Appetit and I thought it looked delicious, plus it was really interesting.

I finally got around to making this sandwich a couple of weeks ago. I halved the recipe for everything except the meatballs, because I knew just from looking at the ingredients that this was going to be a little too spicy for my kids. I thought they could probably handle the meatballs though, so I decided I would make them little noodle bowls with the meatballs included. (This is not something I usually do- making the kids a separate little dinner, but this time the heat was too much for them to handle.)

I used lean ground turkey for the meatballs and greek yogurt instead of mayo for the hot "mayo" spread. I also used a whole wheat baguette for my sandwich.

This sandwich definitely had a really spicy hot bite to it, but it was really tasty! I really liked it and I thought of my younger sister when I took that first spicy bite because she would love this sandwich.

For the noodle bowls, I just sauteed a big head of napa cabbage and some matchstick carrots, then added that to some noodles and topped it with the meatballs.

If you like spicy sandwiches or love Banh Mi, you will definitely want to try this recipe. Or if you just are intrigued and want something new for dinner- give it a shot!



*I used Greek Yogurt for the hot, spicy mayo sauce
* I used lean ground turkey instead of ground pork

Recipe for Pork Meatball Bahn Mi

Vegetable Fried Rice

What do you do with leftover rice?
I had some brown rice leftover after I made Caribbean Red Beans and Brown Rice and knew right away that I was going to use it to make some version of fried rice.
I really wanted to make a vegetable version and found a great recipe online. I just wanted to add a couple more vegetables and ended up doing the recipe my way. I adapted the recipe according to what I did and also included a link for the original recipe.

We had this alongside the salmon in the previous post and it was a really great combination and a really delicious dinner.

There was enough leftover from this recipe, that I was able to add some cooked, chopped chicken to it and it provided us with another dinner later in the week. I love it when that happens.

Vegetable Fried Rice adapted from Eating Well

2 cups cooked brown rice

4 eggs, lightly beaten

2 teaspoons canola oil

8 oz sliced mushrooms

1 lb asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

1 medium red bell pepper, chopped

2 cups sugar snap peas

4 scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces

3 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

1. Heat canola oil in the pan over medium-high; add mushrooms and cook for two minutes. Add asparagus, bell pepper, scallions, garlic and ginger; cook, stirring, until the vegetables are just tender, about 2 minutes.
2. Scoot all the veggies to one side of your pan and add eggs. Cook and scramble for about 1 minute. Mix into vegetables.
   
3. Add the cooked rice, soy sauce, vinegar and sugar snap peas to the pan; cook until the liquid is absorbed, 1-2 minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in sesame oil and sprinkle with the toasted sesame seeds.

Original Recipe for Vegetable Fried Rice