Magical, exotic (and not bitter) eggplants

Charlie Paley should rename his farm market in Sharon, and call it Charlie’s Sugar Shack or Charlie’s Candy Store. The fruits and vegetables he’s been growing and selling over the past few weeks are so sweet and delicious that to call them farm produce doesn’t really capture what they are.

The peaches are my favorite. Charlie doesn’t grow his own stone fruit, and no one in easy driving distance has any peaches this year. The only peaches anyone is selling right now are from southern Pennsylvania. You might think, hmm, then I might as well get them from the grocery store but Charlie’s peaches are sweeter (I don’t know why, but probably because he’s not getting them off a tractor trailer).

The fruits of his labor on his Sharon farm are the corn, tomatoes and eggplants that are at peak ripeness right now.

“To me, September is the peak of the harvest,” he said in an email last week. “We are in the thick of tomato harvest. The store smells like ripe, sweet tomatoes.”

If you want to know why tomatoes smell the way they do, read last week’s Lakeville Journal (Aug. 25). 

The tomatoes are so abundant that they are laid out in cardboard flats all around the store. Now is the time to get a bunch and roast and then freeze them (again, for instructions, look for last week’s paper, or just … roast them in a glass baking dish at 375 until the tops are charred, let them cool, then freeze them in small plastic containers.)

He also has lots of peppers and eggplants. Put them all together and you get ratatouille (add some garlic, onions, basil and lavender).

Or you can make gazpacho. 

I personally like to make lasagna at this time of year, and add slices of eggplant. Precook them. And if you have really a lot of peppers, onions, garlic, hot peppers and tomatoes (and maybe some tomatilloes), roast them until they’re scorched and beginning to turn black, puree them together and you’ll have a spicy delicious salsa that you should add to your lasagna. I guarantee it will be the best lasagna you’ve ever tasted.

Probably there are a lot of you out there who don’t like eggplant. 

One: You think it’s bitter. The new eggplant varieties that most farmers are growing today are not as bitter as the ones we grew up with. 

Although, from a health point of view, that’s actually not a selling point. It’s the healthy phenolic acids that give eggplants their sharp bite, and those acids are getting bred out of the fruit. But never fear: the U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to grow new types that are both less bitter and full of phenolics.

 Two: You think they’re spongy and always have to be drowned in oil and that they are tedious and time-consuming to cook. 

That’s one of the advantages of buying the smaller eggplants you can find at a local farm (as opposed to the very large eggplants normally sold at supermarkets — most of them are a variety known as Black Magic).

Paley’s has some truly tiny eggplants, a beautiful variety called Fairy Tale. They are wildly easy to cook; I just toss them in a skillet with about a tablespoon of oil and they are tender and delicious. I also like that I can leave their little caps on when I serve them.

There are other alternatives to the big eggplants. Paley’s and other local farms usually sell slimmer, longer eggplants that are referred to as Japanese or Italian eggplants. These aren’t as spongy as the big Black Magic varieties, which means that not only do they taste better (and less bitter), they also don’t absorb as much oil. The larger eggplants also tend to have a lot of water in them and fall apart pretty fast once you try to cook them; they don’t work well in a stir fry.  

With the denser and smaller Italian and Japanese varieties, you can just chop them up and stir fry them, and have them on the table in about 5 minutes from the time you start cooking. 

They will have a, mmm, how to say this, a slick texture that some people might not like, similar to okra. And they will have a piquant, strong taste.

I say, go with their strong flavor and texture, don’t be afraid of them! Embrace their exotic deliciousness.

Let’s go all the way with this. I enjoy the mystery novels of Jason Goodwin, whose detective is a eunuch living in Istanbul in the 1830s. The author and the detective love to cook, and one of my favorite descriptions is of Inspector Yashim returning home from the market with two slim eggplants, some butter, some onions and some rice.

He heats up coals in a small brazier in his apartment, slices the eggplants in half lengthwise and grills them. When the skin is charred, he wraps them in a soft cloth for a minute and then uses a sharp knife to scrape away the outer skin, leaving just the white flesh.

And then, because this is a mystery novel, someone breaks into his apartment and we never get the rest of the recipe. 

I’ll use my imagination to fill in the rest: I like to cut my eggplants in half, put them either in a skillet or a hot oven and roast them (with a little olive oil) until they are nice and soft (I think most people undercook their eggplant; I like them caramelized). That should only take about 8 minutes in a 375 degree oven. If you’re not sure if they’re done, poke them with a fork.

Then take them out, put them on a plate, sprinkle on some chopped garlic (better yet, serve them with some roasted garlic, so soft and buttery) and some coarse salt and pepper. 

Squeeze on some lemon juice and then broadcast some chopped parsley or cilantro or chives or scallions or all of the above on top and serve with some grilled lamb and a rice pilaf.