Ingredients:
Choose eggplant that's smooth, shiny, and firm.
At the market, look for eggplant with smooth, shiny skin that's unwrinkled. The fruit should feel firm and spring back slightly when you touch it. Try to find an eggplant with a stem that looks moist, as if recently cut. It's best to use eggplant when it's very fresh, but it will keep for two or three days in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator.
Unless you are char-roasting or oven-roasting, peel and salt for a big improvement in texture and flavour.
The most common type of eggplant is Globe (also known as Western eggplant). Globe eggplant is the most versatile variety, too—its larger size enables you to get slices and chunks. It varies in size from 3/4 pound to 1-1/4 pounds, with dark purple skin. A fresh globe eggplant has pale pulp with a few noticeable seeds, which darken and become bitter as the eggplant matures. Eggplant with parts of dark, hardened pulp with lots of dark seeds will be a disappointment—these parts must be removed; otherwise, the flavour and the texture of the finished dish will suffer.
Because globe eggplant and other large varieties usually have tough skins, peeling it is a good idea, especially if you're serving it in chunks or slices.
Even then, I don't like to remove the skin entirely. Instead, I partially peel it in a striped fashion, the way Turkish cooks do.
For char-roasting the eggplant and separating the flesh from the peel, you keep the skin on during cooking to keep the eggplant intact & remove it afterwards.
Tip: If you don't know what type of eggplant variety you are buying ask the market owner.
Directions:
Preventing greasiness. Globe eggplant, whose flesh is especially sponge-like, tends to soak up more oil than other varieties. If you've ever brushed a raw, unsalted slice with oil, you've probably noticed how readily the eggplant absorbed it. Salting draws out water and helps collapse the air pockets in the eggplant's spongy flesh. This makes the eggplant much less able to soak up lots of oil during frying or grilling.
Reducing bitterness. Salt pulls out juices that carry bitter flavours commonly found in eggplant. The bitter-tasting compounds are concentrated in and around eggplant's seeds.
To salt eggplant , peel it and then slice, cube, or quarter it, depending on the recipe. Sprinkle the pieces generously with salt and let them sit in a colander for an hour (you'll usually see a lot of liquid beading on the surface). Rinse the eggplant in plenty of water to remove the salt, firmly squeeze a few pieces at a time in the palm of your hand to draw out almost all the moisture, and then pat the eggplant dry with paper towels. Thorough drying is important; squeezing out excess moisture will give you a less greasy result.
Fry, grill, or roast—but whatever you do, cook eggplant thoroughly!
Eggplant is one vegetable for which slight under-cooking will not work. It must be completely cooked through until it's meltingly soft, smooth, and creamy; only then will it be flavourful on its own, as well as receptive to the other flavours with which you'll blend it.
Frying. This cooking method seems to throw people the most because of how much grease eggplant can soak up. If you're using globe eggplant, salt it and squeeze it dry; other varieties don't need salting. Be sure the oil is very hot and put the slices in the pan in one layer (if you crowd the pan, the eggplant will steam instead of fry and won't cook evenly). Turn often and adjust the heat to avoid burning until the slices are a rich brown colour. Drain on paper towels.
Stir-frying. Quick-cooking Japanese and Chinese eggplant are the best candidates for stir-frying. Cut the eggplant into 1/2-inch cubes. When the oil is very hot, toss the cubes into the pan with a little salt and stir-fry until the eggplant is a rich brown colour.
Grilling. As for frying, salt and dry the eggplant. Brush the slices with oil and grill over a medium-hot fire until soft and cooked through.
Char-roasting. Gives the eggplant a smoky taste. To achieve this, pierce the eggplant with a skewer and cook it whole and unpeeled directly over a grill flame until the skin is blackened all over and the flesh is thoroughly soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Char-roasting can get messy, so if you're trying this over an indoor gas flame, line the burner trays with foil or try broiling the pierced eggplant instead. Peel off the blackened skin, drain the flesh in a colander, and squeeze out all the moisture.
Oven-roasting. As an alternative to char-roasting, pierce the eggplant in several places and roast it whole and unpeeled on a baking sheet at 350°F until it's quite soft and starting to collapse, almost an hour. Peel and drain it as you would for char-roasting.
