Tuesday, September 22, 2009

What to do with an eggplant

I bought an eggplant at the I-83 Farmers Market this weekend. I'm not usually a fan - especially when it's goopy and baba ghannouj-y, but I decided to give it another try. I just had to figure out a few things to do with it. Slicing it is a pretty standard way to deal with it. As long as you salt the slices for at least five minutes, they will leach out the excess water and bitterness in them. Salting them gave me a very nice texture. From there it was just 20 minutes in the pan, preceded by thinly sliced red onion fried in olive oil for a few minutes. To each of the eggplant slices I added a pinch of Moroccan seasoning that Cathy bought me last Christmas. The eggplants turned out moist but not soggy and went nicely with some couscous with chopped up cilantro.

Now if only I had remembered to remove the skin.

Today, I'm planning panko-encrusted eggplant, or maybe tempura?

2 comments:

Beth said...

A big thing I've found with keeping eggplants from being bitter is eating them very soon after you buy them. They seem to get more bitter each day after they're picked. Also Japanese (small striped small eggplant) tend to be milder.

PS-I love the premise of snacking around the beltway!

John said...

Thanks for the advice and the premise compliment!