"black" eggplant curry and carrot achaar

The typhoon is taking its sweet time passing over us.

Yesterday, the winds were high but overall just cloudy with some off and on showers. The building face-lift people came to take down their net-like "curtain" around their scaffolding, I think this is to prevent the winds from blowing everything down.

Today, it looks like we're gonna have rain all day. If you look at a map of Japan, the eye is around Okayama, and the circumference of the typhoon stretches to the left-side of Honshu all the way to the middle of Kyushu and stretches to the right-side of Honshu touching East Japan....HUGE!

The weather guy said that typhoons spin in a counter-clockwise pattern, so anything to the right-side of the typhoon usually gets the heavy rain and winds...interesting, yeah?!

Tomorrow is forecast for more rain as the typhoon is still making its way to "wherever"...Hopefully we'll be able to ride this out without any excitement.

I recently tried two recipes from Jinsuke Mizuno's "Hajimete no Spice Curry #2".

The "black" eggplant curry didn't turn out like the photo in the book because I made a couple of mistakes along the way.

The carrot achaar on the other hand was super easy to put together.

"Black" Eggplant Curry, adapted from "Hajimete no Spice Curry #2", makes 4 servings
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 large onion. sliced thin
1 clove garlic, grated
1 nub ginger, grated
1 can (200 grams) diced tomato (original says 100 grams)
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (original says to add 1 teaspoon)
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt (omitted)
1 teaspoon ground black sesame seed
15 milliliter shoyu (1 tablespoon)
400 milliliter chicken bouillon
200 grams minced beef
10 small eggplant

Cut the eggplant into 2 centimeter wide rounds and fry in oil until they get a little color, put on the side
In a pan, put some oil and on medium heat, saute the onions until they become a dark brown, but not burnt
Add the garlic and ginger and cook until the moisture evaporates
Add the tomato and cook until the moisture evaporates
Add the turmeric, cayenne, cumin and salt and cook until the spices are fragrant
Next add the ground sesame seed, shoyu and chicken bouillon
Bring everything to a boil
Turn the heat down to a simmer and add the ground beef, cook for about 10 minutes
Add the eggplant and cook for another 5 minutes

NOTES: I didn't read carefully and didn't fry the eggplant so when it came time to add the eggplant they weren't even cooked, so I needed to cook everything longer than the 5 minutes. As I was getting things together for this recipe, I ran out of cayenne pepper, so I only put the amount I had. I also didn't have ground black sesame seed, so I added ground white sesame seed instead.

The market I had bought the eggplants from, sold me duds, most were black-ish when I cut them open. I think they were partially frozen...boo! Anyway, not wanting to run out to the store, I salvaged what I could and made the curry with what was left.

Carrot Achaar adapted from "Hajimete no Spice Curry #2": makes 4 servings
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
1 carrot, 1 centimeter cubes
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
some salt
1 teaspoon ground black sesame seed
squeeze lemon juice (original recipe says 2 tablespoons)

Boil the carrot, cook until soft
In a pan, heat the oil and cumin seed
Add the carrots and stir-fry
Add the turmeric, cayenne, salt and sesame seed
At the end squeeze the lemon juice over everythng

NOTES: not wanting to boil the carrots, I just added the raw carrots to the heated oil and cumin seed. I used ground white sesame seed because I didn't have black. I only had a little nub of lemon in my fridge, so I just used what I had.

I love the heat from this and the lemon gives it a little brightness.

Even though I had some problems with the curry, I enjoyed the flavors of both dishes. I'm making both again.

Have a nice weekend everyone!