Extra Schmaltz!

I love this recipe in late summer, when the farmer's markets are full of Japanese eggplants and Thai basil. It's a sweet, gooey, savory treat that's as spicy as you want to make it and I love eggplant far too much. You can use normal European eggplant too in a pinch.   Serve on white rice.      Ingredients 1-2 eggplants depending on size, in thin slices (Japanese and European work fine, Thai would be weird) 1 red bell pepper (cut into small squares) 4 cloves garlic (smashed and roughly chopped) Thai chilis, to taste (minced) Small quantity of shallots or onions (thin sliced, optional, I like the sweet they provide) Protein of your choice, pre-cooked - I've been liking baked tofu, but chicken or pork work well Thai basil (to taste), remove the bigger stems and chop roughly.  Sauce 4 Tbsp soy sauce 1 Tbsp brown sugar (+palm sugar if available) 1 tsp dark vinegar, or white vinegar 2 Tbsp fish sauce  Optional: 1 Tbsp corn starch dissolved in 2 Tbsp co...

 This is the style of rice pudding that mom would make us growing up. It's a great way to use that small bit of leftover rice that's too little for fried rice or whatever. It's also really, really easy to make. The secret for maximum deliciousness is to err on the side of using less rice, or to add a bit more milk and egg to compensate if you add a bit too much rice.  It's all about that cross-section of custard on top and dense sweet rice on the bottom. Ingredients 1-1.5 c. cooked white rice, but less is better 2 c. milk, or increase if you have more rice 2/3 c. sugar (part brown sugar makes it extra tasty) 1/4 c. raisins or to taste 5 eggs 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1/4 tsp. cinnamon (honestly I just shake and eyeball this)  Preparation Grease an casserole dish. Preheat oven to 350.  Beat the eggs in a big bowl, then add literally everything else and whomp thoroughly.  Pour into the casserole dish, and cook probably about an hour or longer - it takes more tim...

 There's a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin called Mediterranean Cafe. They have a combination of a small fixed menu (falafel, shawarma) and daily specials. My absolute favorite daily special was their Chicken Apricot Pie: a delicious casserole-square of creamy bechamel, sweet-tart apricot something, chicken and bulgur, served with yellow rice and a salad. The best part of the cafe is that everything is hot and pre-made, so you often would get your food before you found your table.  I've wanted to re-create this dish for years, but I've been going basically off of decades-old memories and vibes. I've had a Word doc (pre-Google docs ubiquity) going with multiple versions of it. The biggest breakthrough I had was stalking their Yelp page to find pictures of the dish, which helped me realize that it doesn't have a crust, it just has bulgur to soak up excess liquid.  The dish has a few parts: You're mixing cooked chicken with s...