How I Do My Eggplant

A lot of my friends (including my beloved) tell me they don't like eggplant because of bitterness or poor texture. I think you need to try great eggplant once before you make a judgment about it, because it's a great fruit (technically, but we think of it as a veggie which makes more sense--you wouldn't put it in a fruit salad now would you?)

Eggplant came to us from India, but it wasn't used in the west (per written records) until the 16th century.  Through history, the eggplant has been falsely confused with both potatoes and tomatoes in its taxonomy. It is like neither in taste or preparation, however.

Today I used Japanese Eggplant, but you can use any variety you find in the store. The bitterness comes from the dark seeds. If you slice the eggplant and see dark seeds, remove them immediately and rinse and pat dry your eggplant. I like to slice them into semi-circles if the eggplant is small, or quarters if it is large. Make the slices .5 to 1 inch thick. If a few pieces turn out too thick or too thin, don't stress too much. Spread them out evenly over a sturdy paper towel or clean cloth and salt them well with a ground sea salt or table salt if that's all you've got (I used both).

Now put a sheet of paper towel or clean cloth on top of them. Find a pan that fits and put that on top of the whole lot. Put some cans in the pan to provide weight. The salt will leech water out of the tissues by osmosis, and the pressure from the cans will cause the eggplant to shed the excess water than can make it "mushy."  I used four small cans, as I didn't want to compromise the texture of the eggplant. 

Let that sit about 20 minutes. While it's sitting, you can prepare your dish. Today, I did a quick stir fry with eggplant, ginger, oyster mushrooms and baby bok choy. I heated 2 tbs of vegetable oil until very hot but not quite smoking. Toss in the eggplant and move the pan around very quickly. Cooke for a minute, then dump into a bowl (I used a steel mixing bowl) and let sit while you do the rest. Add another tbs of oil to the pan and cook the ginger and garlic for a second. Then add the mushrooms and toss vigorously. At this point, you can add your own sauce recipe or a commercial sauce. My sauce consists of:

1 tbs rice wine vinegar

1 tbs brown sugar

1 tbs. soy sauce

1 tbs. fish sauce

If you toss this in the mixture, the oil from the pan and veggies should be enough to give the sauce a richness without adding extra fat. 

I finished my stir fry with toasted sesame seed. Very nice aroma and flavor!