The mysterious eggplant

Apart from my shocking forest of healthy parsley, the three varieties of eggplant in my vegetable garden are generally the healthiest and most consistent things I have going. It's funny that I planted them at all, considering that I'd never even tasted an eggplant until earlier this year. And decided that they don't taste very good. No, not very good at all.

The eggplant is a perfect example of a food that, before this year, I would have never eaten, because as I like to say, if you have to do a whole bunch of stuff to a thing to make it palatable, why even bother? I'm sure one could make balsa wood taste good, with enough seasoning. This is why I am the quintessential steak eater. Throw a slab of beef on the grill, and really, it's very difficult to go wrong. No seasoning required. Delectable.

So I never messed around with veggie dishes because you have to do all this stuff to them to make them taste like anything. All the sauces, spices and the like: what's the point? Why not leave these poor plants in the ground, to live out their lives as nature intended?

What happened was: I started tracking my food intake at fitday.com, and learned that there are whole groups of vitamins and minerals that my diet is lacking. Where on Earth does one get Vitamin K, anyway? It turned out that a lot of the nutrients I lacked (not to mention fiber) are found in vegetables. This wasn't a complete shock to me. But since for once I had the proof on paper, right there in front of me, I decided it was time to take action.

And that's when the idea for the vegetable garden took hold, and when I started bringing home things like eggplants from the store. Kind of like exercise: this seemed like yet another necessary evil that I would have to embrace if I wanted to be healthy.

And the eggplant on its own: it's not something that you want to just slice up and munch on as a snack. It's kind of spongy and not wildly flavorful. But it turns out that if you cook it, yes, with a whole bunch of other stuff and with spices and sauces, it makes for a good ingredient. A favorable part of an ensemble cast.

So today's post over at Always Order Dessert, Salting the Eggplant, was an eye-opener for me. In some of my eggplant recipes, "salting" has been indicated, but they always just give some quantity of salt to add to water, and sometimes the eggplant is only sliced in half before it is dunked and soaked. But this entry on eggplant salting is much more revealing. It is very detailed and it explains the procedure. It even makes the eggplant sexy. And possibly, salting the eggplant in this way might make the solitary eggplant taste better to me.

Coming soon: an eggplant taste test. Whopper vs. Ichiban vs. Fairy Tale. May the winner find herself in greater numbers in next year's garden.