As well as attempting to try new beloved recipes this autumn, I put “Do something with eggplant” on my list of things to try. You can read more about my autumn list here.
Eggplant is one of those vegetables I loathed as a child. Shiny and sinister looking, their heft is light beyond their size. Slimy and bitter and neither egg nor plant, this weird looking vegeta-fruit was not a friend of mine. I hated mushrooms – which I adore now, courgettes (zucchini) – which I also love now. Over the summer, eggplant made appearances at a few BBQ feasts and I let my guard down. Maybe it was time to be a grown-up and try eggplant again. I decided to cook with eggplant for the first time ever.
Maybe I should have introduced it slowly, as a minor part of a meal, rather than diving in and making it the star of the show. We had two eggplants and ate them with an orzo salad.
I picked yellow and red tomatoes and rosemary from the garden, added them to an oven proof dish, added some chopped capsicum, seasoned with salt and pepper generously, tossed with oil and roasted for about 40 minutes in a hot, hot oven. Left to cool and stirred into cooked orzo with chopped spinach and a dollop of basil pesto. This was easy and simple. The eggplant I also oiled, seasoned and roasted on a rack in a hot, hot oven for 40 minutes. Plated up with a wedge of lemon, it looked pretty enough.
The orzo salad was good. The eggplant…was ok. I didn’t mind it.
There are worse things and there are lovelier things to eat. The Koala (highly suspicious of vegetarian fare) left most of his eggplant on his plate so I probably won’t be cooking with eggplant again. At least not for another decade or so.
Hey, at least I tried. Again.
Bunny Eats Design 
Love eggplant but its a shame it didn’t work out so well for your recipe! Keep on tryin’!
Thanks Lauren. Maybe one day…in the not too distant future.
Okay, I have two favourite eggplant dishes and I was very suspicious of it before. One, Chinese Szechuan eggplant, sometimes with mushrooms or other vegetables. It’s all about the sauce. And ummm…melanzani, pickled with vinegar, salt, garlic and Thai chilies, stored in oil. It’s chewy and spicy and a very different texture. Takes a bit to make but I love it!
Those dishes sound very tasty, Colleen.
Good for you for giving eggplant another try! I like eggplant, but one of my least favorite things is undercooked eggplant — which is just terrible. When I was reading, I was thinking that with the peppers and tomatoes, you had the beginnings of ratatouille? That was how I learned to like the aubergine!
You know what? I would probably eat the eggplant in a ratatouille. I think The Koala would too…as long as it was a side dish and not the main event!
I love egg plant but it does depend how it is cooked. I found baby egg plant at Avondale market and make a spicy dish with them, the good thing about the baby ones is you don’t cut them so they don’t go mushy! Saying that we had amazing eggplant last night at Ebisu and they where small pickled pieces, delicious
That’s a good point, Allison. We are in SE Asia at the moment, and I don’t mind the small ones in curries. But I suspect there is so much flavor in a curry, that just about any vegetable can lurk without commotion.
I adore egg plant, and you’ve prepared it just beautifully. I would really enjoy this meal.
Thanks Eva. I was hoping I would enjoy this too.