Caviar Verde

Eggplant with brown rice, chard, huazontle, roasted corn, and red pepper sauce.

This is my first time using huazontle, a wild looking vegetable that's common to Mexican cuisine and requires a lot of prep time. It's sold in gigantic bushels of tough stems and leaves but it's usually just the florets that are used. Hauzontle is a nutrient-rich, pre-Hispanic food crop like its cousins amaranth (grown for its grain) and quintonil (bred for its tasty leaves). I prepared it by pulling off the little buds, rinsing them, and then boiling them for about seven minutes. Due to an unbearable bitterness, eating it raw is out of the question.

For this application, I tossed it with a little olive oil, lime juice, honey, and chile to balance out the remaining bitter flavor. I really liked how it looked on the plate: little shrubs of vegetation or delicate green caviar.

This dish was originally conceived around quinoa. But that plan fell through, so I used brown rice instead. I added one chile mora to the rice while it cooked. Chile mora is a smoked and dried red jalapeno similar to chipotle. When the rice was done I minced the chile and returned it to the pot along with some cumin and sesame seeds, both toasted for extra nuttiness.

Scattered about the plate is what I'm gonna call roasted corn, although it took three steps to sound that simple. First, the corn cob was boiled to ensure tenderness because Mexican corn is a little tough when raw. Then it was charred directly on the burner for smoky flavor and color. Before hitting the plate it was sauteed in very hot oil.

To make the sauce, I roasted red peppers on the stove-top and then charred tomatoes, onion, and a garlic clove on the comal. They were pureed with some pimenton and about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. It was robust, tangy, and smoky.

The eggplant was sauteed in olive oil but helped out with a splash of water for a shallow poach (the slices were pretty thick). After the water boiled off and the eggplant had sufficiently browned, I removed them and threw in some chard because I like having some leafy green in almost every meal. A bit of fresh menta (peppermint) tops everything for a couple surprise zings of coolness.

Thanks to Lesley Tellez for huazontle and chile mora inspiration.

-Kenny