Did anyone else totally flip out over Kenny’s winning Hot and Sour Eggplant dish from last week’s episode of Top Chef? Watching the judges take bites while discussing its perfect spiciness was almost more than could be tolerated on an empty stomach.
Figuring out this recipe took a little legwork. There’s a video on the Bravo website of Chef Michael Voltaggio (last season’s winner) cooking the dish, but no actual print recipe. I took copious notes of each step, but found some of the details to be lacking. Like, say, how much lime and lemon juice to add.
I think this ultimately proved to be my downfall. Chef Voltaggio says to add the juice of “4 each lemon and limes” and the “zest of this fruit,” but we all know that the amount of juice we get can vary from fruit to fruit (also, the zest of one fruit? Or all of them?). It looked like his ramekins held about 1/2 cup and he had one ramekin of each juice, so I went with that.
I know this is hot and sour eggplant, but this just seemed like a lot of juice for this dish. I even had more eggplant than was used in the video because I couldn’t bear throwing away the seed-filled core of the eggplant like Chef Voltaggio did.
This dish was sour. Way sour. Tongue-numblingly sour. I added an extra few tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon or two of salt, and it was still overwhelmingly sour for my taste. I wish I’d held back before adding all the citrus juice or cut it with some chicken broth. By the time I thought of doing this, the eggplant had already absorbed quite a bit of the liquid and I don’t think it would have made a difference.
As my husband said to me, “Just stop trying to fix it. Let’s go get pizza.”
This dish was disappointing for sure. It looks really good, but the flavors just seemed very off-balance to me. Maybe too much curry powder as well? I should also note that my eggplant took about an hour longer to cook than Chef Voltaggio’s dish, which made me all the more sad when it turned out to be inedible.
I’m going to assume that Kenny’s original dish was something fantastic and either the video-recipe or my cooking was just really off. Take a look at the recipe as I wrote it down and watch the video, and tell me what you think:
Hot and Sour Eggplants
serves 3-6 people
1/2 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic
1/4 cup curry powder
1 cup red bell pepper, diced
1 cup orange bell pepper, diced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 eggplants, peeled and medium diced (seed core removed, if desired)
Juice from 4 limes and 4 lemons (about 1/2 cup of each)
zest from one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
Carrot tops and celery leaf, chiffonade
Sweat the onions and garlic in 1/4 cup olive oil over medium heat until they are translucent. Lower the heat and stir in the curry powder. Add the peppers and red peppers.
Stir in the eggplant and turn up the heat to medium-high. (I cooked the eggplant at this point until it started to soften.) Stir in the lemon juice, lime juice, and lemon zest. Once the stew is bubbling again, add the sugar.
Let this simmer for 10 minutes (or in my case, an hour). Stir in the carrot tops and celery leaf. Serve. (I served this with brown rice)
Watch the Video: Kenny’s Hot and Sour Eggplants from Top Chef
Related: Cooking Confessions: Do You Eat Your Mistakes?
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Perhaps the long simmer concentrated the juices to the point where they just took a sharp turn into Way Too Sour Town? Maybe added them later in the cooking process, or using less to begin with, is the ticket. I'm leaning towards a little of each of those ideas. I always feel like there must be some magical process or ingredient they use on those shows that we'll never know about, but is the real secret to recreating those dishes. Such a tease!
Judging from the ratio of citrus juice to sugar (2:1), it makes perfect sense that you ended up with a ridiculously tart end result. I'd start with 1/4 C. of sugar and 1/4 C. of juice (about the yield from one lemon and one lime), and then taste to adjust.
I was inspired to make this too after watching the episode! But I didn't watch the video--I just made up my own (extremely rudimentary) version: Saute onions until soft. Add diced eggplant, minced garlic, minced hot chile pepper, ginger, and curry powder. Cook until eggplant starts to soften. Add a scoop of yogurt (or milk, or coconut milk, or whatever), and continue to cook until eggplant is done. Serve with couscous!
You must have missed it. Here is the recipe from the bravo website. Unfortunately not a lot of instructions. But it looks like you missed the olive oil as a main component.
Yield
10-12 Servings
Ingredients
1 cup olive oil
3 cups onion, small dice
1 Tbl garlic, chopped
2 cups red bell peppers
1 cup orange bell pepper
10 cups diced eggplant, peeled
¼ cup curry powder
1 Tbl crushed red pepper
1 Tbl kosher salt
1 Tbl lime zest
1 Tbl lemon zest
½ cup chiffonade carrot tops
½ cup chiffonade celery tops
1 cup sugar
10 limes, juiced
8 lemons, juiced
Directions
1. Heat olive oil in a large pot. Sweat onions and garlic until soft. Add peppers, curry, crushed red pepper, and salt. Cook for 5 minutes.
2. Add eggplant and gently toss together. Cook slowly. Once tender, add remaining ingredients. Fold together and serve.
I make a very similar dish all the time, except I usually start with my own curry mix (tumeric, cumin, coriander, ginger, hot pepper - maybe 1/2-1 tsp each) sauteed in the garlic and onion (I use a mix of olive oil with a few dashes of sesame oil), and then add the diced eggplant with pepper if I have, the juice of only about 1 lime or lemon, then fish sauce, honey, and soy sauce to taste. If it needs more sour, either add a dash of rice vinegar or two, or some more lemon. Top with some sesame seeds and cilantro leaves, serve with brown rice.
It's always a huge hit, good with tofu added too.
Wow, that's alot of curry powder!
You skipped a critical step to de-bittering eggplants! About an hour, two is even better, before cooking time sprinkle the eggplant slices with salt and put in a strainer in the sink. Give them a little squeeze before using. Maybe it wasn't mentioned, but it's a can't-miss step when using eggplants -seeds and all- for the classic Parmigiana.
I agree with elle @ lapsushumanus: 1/4 C. curry powder seems like a lot....
@erhusich did you try the recipe? I'm curious, now that it's official that 18 (!) pieces of citrus were used....
aren't carrot tops poisonous?
Note that the recipe serves 10-12. 10-12!!!!! That's not that much citrus or curry powder for more people than you'll probably ever serve at one time. Halve or quarter the recipe and you'll see what I mean.
carrot tops technically have poisonous component, but you'd have to eat 10 kamillion pounds before you'd get to a problematic dose.
Now here's a perfect recipe to experiment with a recently highlighted (on this site) Indian ingredient - amchoor (amchur). Since this dish is clearly a riff off of a popular way to cook eggplant in India. Try using a couple of pinches of the amchur instead of the juice and zest of lemon and add more towards the end of cooking if you want to increase the sourness. Also, use large cubes of a couple of parboiled potatoes in here if it gets too sour. It helps, I'm not sure why. I'd add the potato as part of the dish anyway. It's pretty good here.
I'm certain that quantity of garam masala is off. For half an onion and two eggplants you wouldn't need more than 2-3 tsp of it tops, 4 if you were a spice fiend.
I ended up making the dish as Michael did, except that I had scaled down the printed recipe and only bought enough lemon and lime to do 3 limes and 3 lemons, and it was still too sour, and it even though it had a ton of curry powder, the curry didn't really come through.
If I had to do it again, I would do it this way:
1/4 cp evoo
1/2 cup small dice onion
2 tsp chopped garlic
sweat...
3/4 cup red bell pepper med dice
3/4 cup orange bell pepper med dice
saute for for a minute or two (the bell peppers texture didn't let the eggplant texture come through)
1/4 cup curry powder
3 cups diced 3/4" diced eggplant
juice of 2 lemons and 2 limes
1/2 cup sugar.
then cook for 10 minutes and serve with a glass of good sauvignon blanc. :)
Now, to figure out what protein to pair this with... any ideas?