Questa è Enida

Of all the fresh vegetables that look fresh, aubergines or eggplants always look the freshest in my eyes. I am almost always drawn to them when I do grocery shopping but I am almost always drawn away again as I have not many ideas of what to do with them. I have cooked them in various curries, I’ve seen Bibik stir-frying them with tomato ketchup and sweet chili sauce, I still ooh’ed and aah’ed about the Aubergine Cooked with Shrimp Paste dish I had at Aroi Dee (Palm Garden IOI) on KaCher’s birthday lunch last year, and I have also tried them plainly blanched and eaten with sambal. But the most I would cook this vegetable is probably once a year. That’s it. I am not worried though, they don’t hatch.

“Oval or elongated oval-shaped and black-skinned cultivars include Harris Special Hibush, Burpee Hybrid, Black Magic, Classic, Dusky, and Black Beauty.” (Wikipedia: Eggplant). Tale be told, eggplants were among witches’ favorite vegetables as they were believed to protect one witch against another’s spell. I know all this, indeed. I am a witch and I spell well. Thanks Spellchecker!

This witch of yours, nevertheless, went and got herself not one – greedy ole witch – but two big Black Magic eggplants last week. Doubled the greed as I had no idea what to make out of them when my hands just swept the two purple bells into my broom-bag. Today, a week later, looking as fresh as I first laid my eyes on ’em… the aubergines finally came out of the fridge and into my oven as Crabbergines, an addition to Enida’s own Krazy Lazy Recipes. True to its name, the two main features of this recipe are crab and aubergine.

They look like chocolate chips cookies, don’t they? Me Monchies were ecstatic when they thought they were getting cookies for lunch! Muahahahahaha! There is no way witchy Mommy would ever in a million witchy years be that fun and cool. Please be informed that me Monchies are big fans of neither aubergine nor crab meat. But it turned out to be a hit finger-food as they taste pretty much like fishsticks or fish fingers.

For a krazy lazy witch Mommy like me, deep-frying is a hard work. So instead of deep or pan frying these mini patties or nuggets, I baked them. There are only two main ingredients: crab meat and aubergines. Or did I write that already?

I found this ‘sausage’ of crabsticks at Aliye Perusa today which I thought was a very good idea (when sliced – as in the picture below – it is ready for a crab burger).

I dumped both the eggplant and crab meat into the food-processor to have them lightly ground adding 1 egg, 4 tablespoons of all-purpose flour, a pinch of salt, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the process. I then rolled the mixture into a ping-pong ball at a time and flattened each on a baking sheet lined with a baking paper. I then dumped the patties into the oven to bake for 45 minutes at 180°C. I truly enjoyed today’s dumping activities. La didi didi, life is good… la dida dida, lazy mood.

The black pieces are the skin as I purposely threw the eggplant into the food processor unpeeled (for fiber). The aubergine ‘meat’ became soft when cooked, the skin turned out thin and not chewy at all. Tastewise… they actually reminded me of the Thai Fish Cake appetizers I used to devour at the restaurant right across from Ace Hardware Store, Ikano Power Center, called Absolute Thai(?) They are also good at “Basil”, a Thai place in Bangsar Village where my best friend and I had lunch  not very very very long long long ago. (Chin, it’s not the antarabangsat one loh!)

Honestly, I was very tempted to put some megahot chilies in the mix while it was processing. But I then realized that it was no fun watching a husband and two monchies smoking away at the dining table from the heat. The fire extinguisher would be too much of an effort and it would be way too messy for my own good. It was supposed to be an easy-n-lazy day anyway. So, I settled with Thai Chili Sauce dip which had no trace of heat whatsochiliever. We had Crabbergines with some leftover Egg Noodles in Beef Soup for lunch.

So there went my Crabby Krazy Lazy Saturday!