How not to cook an eggplant: A play in one act.

[theweaselking]

So I had this eggplant. I don't normally eat eggplant, and I'm actually pretty sure I'm never cut one open before. Eggplant is the kind of thing that shows up in the curry someone else at the table orders and I have a few bites of.

But I had this eggplant.

So I googled and found an easy-looking recipe for fried eggplant rounds. And the verdict..... yeah I'm not making that one again. But I might make a variant on it, especially with zucchini or something other than eggplant.

Short recipe:

1 eggplant, cut into 0.5in thick rounds.
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1 quart vegetable oil, for frying.

Instructions:

1. Mix the cornmeal, chili powder, and oregano in a small dish. Add some salt. Dredge the eggplant slices through it to create breading.

2. Heat a thin layer of oil in a frying pan. Fry the eggplant rounds, 2-3 minutes a side, adding oil whenever you need more oil.

And the result? Well, let's put it this way. I ate them, but I ate them with ketchup. They weren't inedible, just not very good. Bland, and mushy. I thought the instruction to regularly add more oil was weird, until I started cooking - and realised that no, the eggplant is like a sponge, absorbing all the oil. So you need more oil or it won't fry. And then it's saturated with oil when it comes out, bleeds oil when you cut into it, and drips. I don't think I used anywhere near a full quart of oil (I had to look up what a quart was. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, USE METRIC. OR AT LEAST "cups" BECAUSE THOSE ARE SOMEWHAT NORMAL FOOD MEASUREMENTS) and it was still too much. I added *way* more salt, ate 'em with ketchup, and they were still kinda bland and mushy. And the cornmeal was crunchy - little bits of solid cornmeal, sticking in my teeth and giving a rather unpleasant mouth-feel. I just used generic cornmeal, is there a variant that's more like powder and less like sand?

I think if the cornmeal had been powdered and they'd been cooked on a grill instead of fried in oil, they'd have been better.

Anyway. Suggestions for altering the recipe to make it not bad? Or have a preferred way of cooking eggplant that's just way better?

Comments

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I can only give my tips for cooking Aubergine:

Take Aubergine to bin, deposit within. Find something to cook that isn't 89% water.

[frith]

It's eggplant. You can't fix it. When I was young, my mother would (I think bake... probably) eggplant slices in batter. The batter was a flour/egg mix and the only good part of the dish. The eggplant was always a bland unpleasant mush. Eggplant was also part of ratatouille. I hate ratatouille.

Eggplant

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

There's a lotta different eggplants. I'm guessing you had a big purple one. Grilling them is good, as is brushing them with oil and baking the critters. (They can't suck up all the oil that way.) You can bake or fry them with breadcrumbs or flour if the cornmeal is too much for you. You can also batter them. Try the smaller ones in stir fries and curries if you go there.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Big purple one, indeed.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

If I were going to make this, I'd leave out the eggplant. Probably not the advice you're looking for though. (Eggplant works best, IMO, sliced thin, salted and then weighted down with a plate and them something heavy for at least an hour to get the bitter out, and then cooked a long time in a tomatoey sauce.)

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

First up a standard disclaimer: I consider eggplant in almost all incarnations to be the work of Eris in one of her more unpleasant moods. The only exception is in Japanese eggplant pickles, which are quite good.

That aside, my late mother loved eggplant, and, being Spanish, had a number of ways of preparing it, including ratatouille. The most common, though, was fried, in a light batter, or simply floured and sprinkled with pepper and paprika.

The trick in all these cases, though, was to de-water and de-bitter them first, by heavy salting of the slices and resting for several hours (turning several times), followed by a wipe down to remove the surface salt. Only then did she cook the slices.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

My own mother tells me that the secret is garlic. More garlic than that. No, still more garlic. Her theory is "drown it in aromatics and spices you like, and the texture will still suck but it will taste better".

My own advice is to eat 'em young...

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Before they get old and bitter. Or eat the small Japanese eggplants or the small white ones. The times I've salted them, I've ended up with salty eggplant.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

"Eat 'em young…before they get old and bitter." Guess that advice doesn't work just with eggplants. [rimshot]

[eris.livejournal.com]

Don't blame this on me, I had nothing to do with the eggplant. It's too easy to just avoid eating it entirely. Even in a foul mood, the result must still amuse me on some level.

[stout-john.livejournal.com]

I slice them into 1" rounds, baste with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and then grill.

I also like to sauté them in chili powder and cumin.

[nurseysarah.livejournal.com]

Char the outside and then bake whole in the oven until soft, scoop out the inside and make baba ganoush dip -

http://www.food.com/recipe/baba-ganoush-the-best-in-the-world-67570

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Oops, I was going to supply the very same recipe until I saw you had thought of it first!

[nurseysarah.livejournal.com]

Great minds think alike :)

[nomadmwe.livejournal.com]

Sliced into rounds, brushed with oil and spices, and grilled.

Also, made into baba ganoush.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

So, "what I did, but grilled, not fried in oil". I kinda agree, that would be WAY BETTER.

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

All the suggestions are good, but also salt the eggplant thoroughly, let sit for 30 mins, rinse and dry between paper towels. This will pull out a lot of the bitterness.

[being-here.livejournal.com]

About the only way I can tolerate them is cooked down so they are a silky part of a sauce for Indian food, or deep fried and cooked in the Chinese style. This is the recipe I use most at home: http://craftycooknook.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/shanghai-home-style-eggplant-is-enough-to-make-me-swoon/

Followed by this: http://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fragrant-eggplant/

It's taken me years to be able to eat aubergines, and I still don't choose them unless I have to, but they're not bad that way.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

I am mildly surprised that no-one has yet mentioned moussaka, which is like basically lasagna using eggplant instead of lasagna. This recipe (http://greekfood.about.com/od/eggplant/r/moussaka.htm) is rather more complex than I usually bother with, but probably more traditional.


However, I recommend you give this peanut and eggplant dish (http://www.theppk.com/2008/10/spicy-peanut-eggplant-and-shallot-stew/) a try next time - smangesable makes a somewhat spicier variant of it as one of our more regular meals, and it's always good. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, she's collected a few other recipes (http://smange.tumblr.com/tagged/eggplant).
(I think the main takeaway from that collection is that eggplant works better in Asian food.)

[calankh.livejournal.com]

Eggplant spaghetti sauce (http://www.thewednesdaychef.com/the_wednesday_chef/2010/06/francis-lams-letmyeggplantgo-free-spaghetti.html)

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

There's a reason eggplants are evil in Adventure Island, Kid Icarus, and Bubble Bobble.

[moiread]

That sounds... disgusting.

When I cook eggplant, I slice them in half and add two slits cross-wise across the open faces before brushing them with garlic olive oil and sprinkling some fancy herbed sea salt on. Then I just pop the halves in the oven on a lined baking sheet until they're all squishy and collapsed. Remove, let cool a bit, then scoop out the cooked flesh with a fork and eat it. Simple and delicious, and works on eggplants of all sizes. :)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It sounded better before I knew what "eggplant in oil" did. I figured it would be like fried zucchini or potato.

[geekweevil.livejournal.com]

eggplant is only good as a carrier food (like tofu) - serve it overcooked and totally mushy in curry or sauce or make scnitzel out of it. if it's not sliding apart it's not cooked enough. if it's sliding apart and mushy, it's really nice in almost anything but it does need strong flavours with it like tomato or curry or something.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Personally, I love eggplant, and I love it fried, but this:

'add more oil'

Seriously? Add more oil? If you do that, your eggplant will sop up the cold oil like a sponge! Ew! Gross! No. The trick to fried eggplant is to heat the oil to as close to the temperature of the surface of the sun as you can get it and do it in small batches, so you don't overcool the oil by adding too much eggplant. You also need to suck out excess moisture from the eggplant itself: this is part of the point of the salting and resting; the other part is removing the bitterness. Thus, once you've rinsed the salt off, pat it thoroughly dry.

Edit: you can shallow fry eggplant in olive oil, but if you want to deep fry it, make sure you use an oil with a very high burn temperature, such as peanut or sunflower.

Also: Corn meal? Seriously? It's gritty and it burns when you fry it and it gets stuck in your teeth! Ew! Gross. I prefer to leave them unbattered, or, if you really want batter, use a light batter made with fine flour, a pinch of baking soda for added fluffiness, and ice water. Only a quick dip in for a very light coating.

Otherwise, grilling with olive oil and garlic wins. It also barbecues extremely well in fat slices and takes just about any marinade.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that recipe was, in retrospect, really bad. But I didn't know that before I made it, having no experience with eggplant.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see how if you didn't anticipate the extremely absorbent properties of eggplant, you might not expect it to turn into slimy grease turds. But then, it's this very thing that makes it so good in curry or moussaka or sauce-based things. They are even more absorbent (and more bitter) the older they get, so the young and fresh maxim holds. I like them shallow fried in olive oil-- they will suck it up, but they'll continue to cook nicely with just the oil in the flesh; no need to add more.