Oops

Though it’s Halloween, there still hasn’t been a frost in the Hudson Valley, which means growers are still bringing late summer vegetables to market—peppers, beans, the last few tomato stragglers. We’ve been taking advantage of the long season by eating lots of eggplant. Some I’ve fried and served with pasta; others I’ve roasted in the oven and puréed with grated shallot, parsley, olive oil and a splash of vinegar to scoop up with pita from the Middle Eastern bakery on Atlantic Avenue. Last week, trying to keep up with the eggplant onslaught and craving something spicy, I found myself scoping out the recipe for a Burmese dish called makeua oop in the brilliant and beautiful Hot Sour Salty Sweet.

Like lots of Thai and Lao food, the oop recipe starts with a spice paste—a generous handful of thin-sliced shallots, a few coarsely chopped cloves of garlic, a couple of Thai red chiles, a pinch of salt, and a coarsely chopped tomato, all pounded in a mortar (or blended in a blender) with a pinch of funky dried shrimp until smooth. The paste is fried in a big, heavy pot, and then things get weird. A pound and a half or so of cut-up eggplant is just dumped into the pot, covered tightly, and cooked over fairly low heat until it’s helpless. The recipe seemed strange because there was no liquid to cook the eggplant in—there’s even an explicit warning against adding water.

In culinary school they carefully explain that there are five basic cooking methods: sautéing, frying, dry methods like roasting, wet methods like steaming or boiling, and “combination methods,” which basically means braising. It’s an exciting way to think about things since seeing the similarities between recipes makes it easier to improvise. But the oop recipe didn’t seem to fit in any of the categories, and putting the eggplant in a dry pot took a little faith. I should have known not to worry—everything I’ve made from this cookbook has been good. It turns out that eggplant has enough water in it so that it basically steams itself in the pot, which I suppose makes the recipe fall under the “combination methods” banner. Not that I cared once it was done and spooned over rice. Hot from the chiles, sharp/sweet from the shallots and garlic, with a touch of fermentation from the dried shrimp, this may be my new favorite way with eggplant.