What to Do with Eggplant
As a professional cook, I have loads of vegetable preparation methods filed in my brain, which makes it easy to shop for and throw together weeknight meals. Are carrots looking good at the market? Roast them with a touch of butter and flavor according to whatever else is on the menu. Spinach? Sauté with aromatics. Asparagus? Pan-steam until crisp-tender. And so it goes: I have equally straightforward one-pan techniques for almost every vegetable out there. Except eggplant. Faced with a pile of these dark, glossy specimens, I’m stumped. Sure, I can make a great eggplant Parmesan or fire up the grill for authentic baba ghanoush, but that’s project cooking. If I just want a simple side, I’m out of ideas.
The result is that I often bypass eggplant, and that’s a shame, because it is such a lovely vegetable (actually, botanically speaking, it’s a berry). Eggplant is easy to prep and mild in flavor (modern varieties are bred to be less
