I boiled my eggplants whole in some water, turning them to cook them through (they were the long, thin kind, so slightly less bitter than the big purple ones. They were at a very good price at my farmers' markets). Then I let them cool while I chopped some fresh mint (it's what I had. I didn't know if it would be a good replacement for cilantro, but I figured I'd give it a go. Oh, I also threw 8 red chilies into the eggplant-boiling liquid to resuscitate them. The recipe calls for fresh, but no way was I going to go out and buy eight chilies when they probably wouldn't even end up being the right kind anyway. So I sliced my resuscitated (and slightly boiled...) chilies open, got rid of the hot seeds (the seeds don't add flavour, just burning heat) and threw the flesh into the mortar and pestle with the salt and mint. I just skipped the scallion, but I could have added some diced shallot if I'd wanted.
Now the fun part - the mashing. You crush it all up with the pestle. There is good mortar and pestle technique and then there's bad. Mine is lacking. I watched an episode of Poh's Kitchen (you can find the podcast on iTunes for free) where she talks about it, but it's a small screen on my iPod and I'm maybe a slow learner. Anyway, everything got mashed in the end, and that's the point, really. You're now supposed to mash in the peeled eggplant, so I mashed a little at a time, and then just mashed in another bigger bowl (carefully!). The above picture is what came out. Oh it was so good. My chilies weren't Thai chilies so the heat was different, but my goodness it was hot. Now I love heat. I LOVE heat, but this was really, really hot. I ate a lot of it anyway, because the flavour was still SO good (my tongue could still find flavour through the slightly mind-numbing heat), but if you are scared of heat, I'd say use 2-3 chilies only. You're missing all the fun, and colour, but you won't have a fit on the flour. Not that I did.
Oh, the mint worked out nicely in the end.
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