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.