“I’m struck by the variety of eggplants at my local farmers market. Since I’m trying to eat more vegetables, they seem like a fun place to start, but what’s the best way to cook them?” James Goodman
Eggplant, one of the glories of late summer, holds a valued place in cuisines all over the world, including those of India (where it originated), Italy, France, Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Because it is so at home with a cosmopolitan array of seasonings—and because it’s delicious hot, cold, or room temperature—its versatility is nothing short of dazzling.
What I really like about eggplant is its rich, suave, savory quality—it is, after all, regularly used as a meat substitute. We spend much of the season gorging on fruits and vegetables high in natural sweetness—berries, peaches, melons, tomatoes, zucchini, corn, peppers, and more—and by mid-August, I, for one, begin to crave a deeper bass note of flavor.
Here I would also like to address the misgivings people have about bitterness (an undesirable characteristic to Western palates) and the related fact that eggplant is a nightshade.
It’s an Old World member of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), to be precise, and so contains bitter alkaloid compounds thought to contribute to numerous illnesses and conditions such as arthritis and chronic joint pain. It also has more nicotine than any other commonly eaten vegetable. The earliest eggplants contained high amounts of alkaloids, but over the centuries, plantsmen have bred out excessive bitterness.
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