Eggplant and Avocado-Tomatillo Chicken

We ended up shopping at a different grocery store today a little farther from where we live. While we were in the produce section, I noticed that they carried three types of eggplants. The wicked ones (the big ones with yucky skin), baby eggplants, and an eggplant called the "graffiti" eggplant. Even though our initial plans for the week had not included eggplant, I was excited to do a side-by-side taste-test of two types of eggplants with this recipe, which was initially reviewed in an earlier blog entry.

In the first picture below, the graffiti eggplant is on the left, the baby eggplant is on the right.




It should be noted that we used rice vinegar instead of rice wine. The boy and I both preferred the baby eggplant. The graffiti eggplant, while pretty, is just too mild. It literally had no flavor at all--all you could taste was the miso-garlic topping. The baby eggplant was also fairly mild, but had a bit more oomph to it. I would definitely not get the graffiti eggplant again, or recommend it, unless you want to taste every flavor in your eggplant dish except eggplant!

Prep: 10/10
Yums: 8/10
Comfort: 5.5/10

For our main meal, we had seared chicken with tomatillo-avocado salsa. I decided to jazz this recipe up a bit. First, I cooked the chicken in a bit of chicken broth, with some splashes of soy sauce, about 1-2 teaspoons minced garlic and a drizzle of sesame oil. In addition to using a full avocado in the salsa (instead of measuring 3/4 cup, I included half of a tomato, and about 1/4 cup of minced vidalia onion. Delicious! I would definitely make this again. It's pretty quick and easy and makes for a pleasant summer dish.


Prep: 8/10
Yum: 9/10
Comfort: 7/10