Grappling with eggplant

I love the idea of eggplant. It looks so tasty, all plump and purple at the store. But I'll be honest with you, I have yet to successfully cook this strange vegetable. And yet every year I can't help but try, like Charlie Brown kicking that football.

Eggplants are part of the nightshade family, related to the tomato and the sweet pepper. They grow on vines like tomatoes, creating large pendulous fruit that are in season in late summer (August to October).

Eggplant nutritional benefits (i.e., why you should try)
Eggplants may taste bland and spongy, but they pack a big load of antioxidants, phytonutrients, and micronutrients. The skin of the eggplant is rich in an anthocyanin called nasunin, which is a powerful antioxidant that can help boost brain performance. Other compounds in eggplant can help improve cardiovascular health and protect your cells from free radical damage.

Image courtesy Flickr/NellieMcS

On the other hand… (i.e. why you might want to skip it)
Eggplants have two strikes against them.

First, they are one of the few foods available at the grocery store which are high in oxalates. Some people, particularly those with kidney and gallbladder problems, have been advised by their doctor to follow a low oxalate diet. If this is the case for you, then you should avoid eggplant. (As well as other high-oxalate foods like spinach and kale.)

Second, eggplants are part of the nightshade family, which some diets would have you avoid. Many nightshade plants (like the eponymous deadly nightshade) are poisonous. Other nightshade plants are clearly not toxic to that level, but some people feel that they are mildly poisonous.

Some people have found that they react badly to members of the nightshade family, with reactions that vary from migraines to skin problems. Others can eat nightshade plants without problems. As is so often the case, listen to your body on this one.

How to choose and store an eggplant
Look for eggplants that are firm, and seem heavy for their size. The color should be vivid, and they should be free of any discoloration, mushy spots, or other obvious damage. Eggplants are ripe when, if you press gently with your thumb, the skin springs back. If a dent remains, the eggplant is not ripe.

Like their relative the tomato, eggplants are very perishable. Once they have been cut, they go bad quickly. Store them whole in a cool dark place, ideally around 50 degrees. An uncut eggplant will keep in your refrigerator's crisper for a few days.

Image courtesy Flickr/JulkaG

Preparing eggplant
One way to get some of the bitterness out of eggplant and help tenderize its flesh is to salt it. Cut it in spears or wheels, sprinkle the cut flesh with plenty of salt, and let it sit for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator. This will pull out a lot of the bitter fluid, and make the eggplant slightly easier to prepare.

Note: RINSE THE SALT OFF BEFORE COOKING. The one time I tried the salt method (which I had heard about from Alton Brown) I missed the part where he said to rinse off the salt. The resulting baked eggplant was inedibly salty.

You're probably too smart to make that mistake, but I feel it is my duty to point it out anyway.

If you don't mind the bitterness (frankly I don't find eggplant to be all that bitter) the easiest way to cook it is like a baked potato. Take a whole eggplant, stab it a few times with a fork to let the steam escape, and bake it on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Test it with a fork to see if it is finished baking; when the fork passes through the flesh easily, the eggplant is done.

Eggplant recipes
Ratatouille is probably the canonical eggplant recipe, partly because of that movie where a cartoon rat cooks meals for people. (Gross.) The rat actually did not cook ratatouille correctly, so don't expect your own to turn out looking like the dish in the movie. Real ratatouille is a traditional French Provencal casserole of stewed vegetables. Here's a great recipe to get you started.

Slate's "You're Doing It Wrong" column claims that the best way to work with eggplant is to make eggplant caponata. It sounds like a lot of work to me (I'm a very lazy cook) but it certainly looks tasty!

Main image courtesy Flickr/The Marmot