Aubergine is not the Oily Fruit

I like aubergines. They have a very individual, earthy taste, and the skin of the purply ones is supposed to be jolly good for you. Over the years I've tried many different ways to cook them, settling generally now for either a) baking them whole in the oven until they collapse, then using the mushy flesh for dips etc and discarding the skin; or b) putting them on a hot griddle pan greased with a wipe of olive oil. Frying them, however they are treated beforehand, always leaves them too oily. Even the griddling tends to the oleaginous.


Yesterday, however, I more or less followed an Ursula Ferrigno recipe for aubergines baked in tomato sauce, with a cheese topping - a parmigiana in other words. Her instructions were to slice them fairly thinly, sprinkle the slices with rosemary leaves, then bake them on a lightly greased metal tray for 10 minutes or so in a 200C oven. It worked a treat (though they needed more like 15 minutes), and they were not at all greasy. You can teach an old dog new tricks.


Aubergines are yet another vegetable (fruit actually) that our supermarkets pretty much restrict to one style, i.e. the over-sized purple sort which can be somewhat woolly. My local Indian supermarket has at least four varieties in stock every time I go in, which is with increasing frequency. The ones used for the dish above were the size of a large hen's egg (large enough to make it walk funnily after laying), with a mottled pinky-white-purple skin. Next time I'll go for the short and slender all purple ones; or the white ones that evidence why the Americans call them egg plant.


I may have mentioned my annoyance recently at Sainsbury's labelling their non-standard fruit and veg as 'greengrocers'. If you can still find an old-fashioned greengrocer, they will almost certainly stock more varieties than the supermarket does. And they'll be locally grown quite often. The Asian supermarket is fast replacing such places. They'll continue to get my custom, as I don't want 10 years hence (fingers crossed) to find F&V restricted to bananas and potatoes, which would suit their bigger rivals.

Market Forces

A timely reminder yesterday that supermarkets are not the only, or the best, places to food shop. The Dear Leader took me to Preston Indoor Market while we were in town, and it was worth the detour. Two best buys were duck-egg-sized cream aubergines from the Asian veg stall, and un-vinegared whelks from one of the fish stalls (it also yielded some fine naturally smoked haddock enjoyed for breakfast this dreary Bank Holiday Sunday). Not only was the fish stall offering a wider range than Sainsbury's or Booth's, but it appeared better kept/more freshly sourced. And the prices on both were competitive - a huge bunch of coriander for 70p for example, easily four times what you'd get for the money at JS.

We'd invited some friends for a pretty impromptu Chinese-y meal, so most of the market finds were included in that, the little aubergines (the Americanism egg-plant in their case would have been perfectly valid) in a Thai green curry with other veg, the whelks as one of the starter dishes.

In my old life I travelled frequently in Taiwan, several times taken to one of those fish restaurants with stalls outside displaying the available ingredients. Asked what I fancied one time I opted for the whelks, partly because I love seafood, partly to see what Chinese cookery would do with them - this proved to be a simple dish of just the whelks barbecued with chili aplenty, and it proved a revelation.

I rinsed our £2.50 worth, then marinated them for three or four hours in a paste made with red and green chilis and coriander, a little soy sauce and sesame oil. Stir fried with some more green chili, soy, and sping onion they were lovely rather than rubbery as it were.

Whelks are, if not a superfood, a terrific one. Stuffed full of protein, minerals, vitamins and a little carbohydrate they're little packets of goodness. But equally importantly, they bring a taste of the sea in the way the more revered oyster does - and at a fraction of the price.

Gray (or Grey) is not the New Red

I've written here before about the positive aspects of colour, but yesterday I produced something that, while delicious (even if I say so etc) was not a delight, as it was gray. The gray of John Major's skin in Spitting Image. The gray of a naval vessel too long without a re-coat.

Doubtless whole bookshelves of scholarly stuff must exist on why we react as we do to colour (I wonder if it is the same, as regards food anyway, across cultures?). Gray is so unappetising.

The colour came about as I used the insides of a previously roasted aubergine (now there is a beautiful colour) along with a tin of anchovies, plus garlic and red chilli, zapped in our smoothie maker with stock as the basis of a fish soup. Basa fillets poached in it remained pleasingly white. Large prawns added some vivid coral. More chilli cut into rings flecked it with bright red. But the whole was inescapably gray.

That said, the flavour was deep, and the aubergine did the job I wanted of thickening the soup without the need for cream or carbs. It was moreish enough for two bowls apiece to disappear before it had cooled beyond the tongue-burny. But our conversation, just like this piece, was littered with the word 'gray'.

I tried to think of other gray foods, and only really came up with coley, not the most enticing of fish, and mushroom soup (not mushrooms raw or cooked, just the result of mixing the dark fungi with white cream), though acceptable enough not the favourite of many I'd hazard.

So negative was the reaction to the aubergine-enriched potage that next time I do something along those lines I'll have to add to the stuff to be blended tomato, or more chillis, or maybe some orange or red peppers. Contrary to Spike's assertion in Notting Hill, chicks don't like gray, and nor do chaps.