The end of the summer growing season means that our gardens, and farmer’s markets are full of fun and colorful veggies like the eggplant!
Eggplants grow all over the world with a lot of different names, and historians all seem to agree that they don’t know who grew it first. There are records of them in ancient China, India, North Africa, and the Middle East. They grow in a few different colors and sizes, and the first ones shared with Europeans from Asia were small and white, like chicken eggs, so they called them eggplants in English, although in Australia and the UK they call them aubergines. There are big purple eggplants, long thin eggplants with speckles, and the tiny white ones. The Eggplant is part of the nightshade plant family, and is technically a berry, but we eat it like a vegetable. They are low-carb, low-fat, and are good at taking on the flavor of the things you cook it with, like spices or meat.
Eggplants are part of a lot of different cultures so you can find a lot of recipes that use eggplant. They can be grilled, roasted, fried, stuffed, baked, or pureed. Famous recipes that use eggplant are the French countryside dish Ratatouille, or the Persian recipe for the roasted eggplant dip Baba Ganoush. An easy recipe to make if you’ve never tried one before is Eggplant Rollatini. Its like a cheesy lasagna, dinner but more fun to make! Try it out with your family and let Captain Create know how it goes.
