Vegan MoFo: Spicy Peanut, Eggplant and Shallot Stew

When I was in my final semester of college, a gang of my friends started coming up with a series of fairly elaborate pranks -- one of which involved attaching someone's strap-on dildo to the sculpture in the Quad -- and decided to name ourselves after colors, like in Reservoir Dogs, except that, since it was Wellesley, we'd all be shades out of the J. Crew catalog. I was "Aubergine" and that is fitting as I have come to love eggplant like nobody's business.

This recipe from Veganomicon is soo delicious and warm and spicy, and the perfect thing to make it starts to get cold at night. (It also used the green beans, eggplant and potatoes from my farm pickup this morning!) Whoever figured out that salting eggplant made it delicious deserves some kind of culinary Nobel.