Poor Richard’s Almanac

Eggplant eggstravaganza. August 9, 2009

Silence Dogood here. We’re starting to get eggplant from our CSA (organic subscription farm), which of course means it’s time to start cooking them. Our CSA offers a nice selection, from the standard, hefty dark-purple “Italian” types through long, slender Asian eggplants to a small, teardrop-shaped, white-and-purple-streaked ‘Fairy Tale’ variety that’s a delight to see and eat. But how to prepare them? 

As a child, I hated eggplant—it always seemed bitter and bitterly oily. Not to mention the weird texture. Yuck! It wasn’t until I was grown that I somehow discovered that eggplant could be delicious. Now I love eggplant rollatini and (of course) eggplant parmesan, ratatouille, baba ghannouj, and Szechuan eggplant with garlic sauce. Yum!!! Talk about an about-face.

But much as I love these eggplant dishes, I seldom prepare them at home. I do occasionally make a Chinese-inspired eggplant dish with thin-sliced oriental-style eggplants sauteed in olive oil with sweet onion, green onion, minced garlic, minced fresh ginger, salt, a dash of hot sauce, and General Tso’s Sauce, then serve it over steamed rice. This dish is decadent and good, but it’s hardly what you’d call cooking.

With eggplants arriving weekly at our local CSA, what could I make that would do these glossy fruits justice? (Please help me deflate all those pompous ignoramuses who proudly announce that “tomatoes aren’t vegetables, they’re fruits” by reminding them that eggplants, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and many other crops are also fruits—basically, that any plant that’s harvested for anything other than its roots, shoots, or flowers is a fruit—but somehow, the horticulturally illiterate fixated on the tomato as the only plant that was “misclassified.” Not so! Fruits and vegetables are classified by botanists by the part of the plant used, but by the cook by whether the plant is used to make a savory dish [vegetable] or a dessert [fruit]. Thus, cantaloupes and watermelons have more in common with squash and cucumbers than with apples and pears, but they’re still considered fruits, not vegetables, by cooks. Please trust a highly educated horticulturist on this and shut up about the tomato-fruit thing already.)

Time to turn to the cookbook collection. Sure enough, I found many eggplant recipes in various international cuisines, and boy, did they look good. I also found a couple of recipes that took eggplant from good to stratospheric. There was a fabulous spice-encrusted eggplant in Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine from South India called “Stuffed Eggplant Poriyal” that looked so incredibly delicious it brought tears of pure lust to my eyes. But not being what you’d call a whiz at preparing multiple elaborate dishes in the kitchen all at once (especially with, sigh, just three functional burners on our ancient gas Caloric—and no, I’m not making that name up!—stove), I decided to focus on a dish I could put together early in the day, then heat and serve at supper time with a minimum of additional fuss.

This brought me to two of Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks, Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking, with its “The Lake Palace Hotel’s Aubergine Cooked in the Pickling Style” (aubergine is French and British English for eggplant, and no, this recipe doesn’t make eggplant pickles! as Ms. Jaffrey says, the result is more like a spicy ratatouille), and Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, with its “Baghara Baigan, Eggplant Cooked in the Hyderabadi Style.” I was hugely tempted by the Bhagara Baigan because I thought the shredded coconut and jaggery (aka gur, aka raw sugar) would complement the eggplant, I’d never had anything like it before, and I happened to have all the ingredients. (Jaggery is available in cones, reminiscent of the sugar cones used by 18th-century European housewives, at Indian and some Middle Eastern/Asian specialty stores. To use it, you shave or cut off what you need.) No doubt I’ll make it next time I get some eggplant.

But today, I’m going to make an elaborate vegetable curry and a delicious dal for supper, and that’s enough high-end cooking for me. I’ll heat up the wonderful homemade samosas from the nearby Indian grocery in Emmaus, PA, Rice and Spice, and serve them with mint sauce as an appetizer. Then I’ll serve the curry, dal, and eggplant dish with rice, plain yogurt or a simple raita made from minced cucumber, plain yogurt, cayenne, and salt stirred together, and an assortment of chutneys and sauces. Afterwards, we’ll have dates, the wonderful Indian digestive sweet fennel-based seed mixture, and tea. And because there’s always more dal and curry than we can all eat and guests can take home, I can heat them up later in the week with a delicious saag paneer (a simple and simply wonderful spinach and Indian cheese dish), naan, and rice (with, of course, yogurt and the chutneys and sauces). Good times!

But getting back to the eggplant. What’s a good, simple eggplant dish that can be made in advance and reheated just before serving? I asked my friend Huma how she liked to prepare eggplant. Sure enough, it’s a simple, tasty dish that can be reheated to serve. Try it and see what you think!

          Huma’s Easy Eggplant

Heat oil in a heavy frying pan. When hot, add minced garlic (Huma uses an entire bulb, but suit your own tastes—that’s a lot of cloves!) and saute, without burning, until the garlic is evenly browned. Slice slender Asian eggplants into 1/4-inch rounds (basically the thickness of sliced cucumbers) and add them to the oil and garlic, putting in just one layer covering the bottom of the pan. Cook until the eggplant is golden on one side, then flip and cook until the other side is golden. If you’re cooking more eggplant slices, remove the browned eggplant with a spatula and set on a paper towel on a plate. Add a bit more oil to the pan, then put in the next layer of slices. When they’re done, return the original slices to the pan, add a minced fresh green chile pepper, ground cayenne pepper, ground turmeric, salt, and black pepper to taste, stirring to coat the eggplant. Now, add water, not to cover all the eggplant slices but to come up the sides of the top slices. Turn the heat on low and cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid.

While the eggplant is cooking, mince two or three more green chiles finely and put them in a small bowl so chile fans can add as much heat to the dish as they like. After about ten minutes, uncover the eggplant and mash them a bit with a wooden spoon or potato masher. You don’t want to turn them into a paste, just to release some of the liquid and, as Huma says, the fragrance of the cooking spices. Continue cooking until the eggplant is thoroughly soft and the water has been absorbed into a spice paste. Serve with rice, plain yogurt, and the bowl of green chiles.

Thanks, Huma! What a great way to use eggplant! Everyone, if you have favorite eggplant recipes, please share. As I’ve found out, this distinctively flavored vegetable can star in some of the most unique dishes there are!

           ‘Til next time,

                          Silence