Growing up, my exposure to eggplant didn’t involve a crisp coating of bread crumbs under a blanket of cheese and marinara.
My mom tossed hunks of the jumbo purple Globe eggplants intopinakbet, which you could think of as Filipino "ratatouille," but flavored with shrimp paste and pork. She would char skinny Chinese eggplants on our electric stovetop’s burners, peel them, pile them on a plate, and douse them with fish sauce. In either case, all you’d need to complete the meal was rice.
Right now, in eggplant’s high season, it’s hard not to support any dish where eggplant is the star: classicratatouille, a sprightlycaponata, or, of course,eggplant Parm. But I won't deny that the cravings for my mom’s eggplant dishes are at their peak right around now, too.
Wherever your eggplant allegiances lie, now’s as good a time as any—actually, the best time—to stock up.
When Is Eggplant Season?
Eggplants are in theSolanaceaeor nightshade family of plants, along with peppers and tomatoes. They like it hot, which is why farmers’ markets are so flush with them in the dog days of summer, and they’re a hard-working lot, continuing to produce fruit (yes, since eggplant has seeds it is botanically a fruit) until it gets too cold. Count on a steady stream of eggplant until the first frost, says Robert Westerfield, a horticulturist with the University of Georgia Extension.
Types of Eggplant
There’s an impressive array of eggplant out there, especially for farmer’s market shoppers. Some are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, others rival a Nerf football in size, and not all are purple.
The Black Beautyeggplant, also referred to as a globe eggplant, is the supermarket standard, big and bulbous with dark purple, almost black skin that’s often peeled before cooking. This variety tends to contain more seeds than some of the other varieties below.
Thin-skinned Asian varieties不需要剥皮,不等长,slender Japanese and Chinese eggplants to round, lime-sized, green-and-white Thai varieties.
Fairy Taleeggplants are only a few inches long at most, with light purple, white-streaked skin.
White eggplantsare the variety that originally inspired the nameeggplant because of their ivory skin. They range from egg-shaped to oval to long and slender. They tend to have a creamier flesh and sweeter flavor than their purple counterparts.
More unusual are orange-skinnedTurkisheggplants. Better to eat these round eggplants while they’re still in the green stage, though. They get seedier as they grow and turn orange.
How to Pick Out an Eggplant:
Shiny skin is your main tipoff to a good eggplant. This applies no matter its size or color, Westerfield says.
An eggplant also should feel firm and dense and have a "leaf cap" that is more green than brown.
Bitterness, everyone’s least favorite eggplant characteristic, comes with age, again regardless of size or variety. “If you leave it on the vine too long, it will tend to get mealy and woody and the skin will get tougher,” Westerfield says. And if an eggplant’s been off the vine and sitting in a bin too long, it'll go bitter, too. If an eggplant feels soft or has wrinkled skin or dried-out leaves, pass it by.
How to Store Eggplant:
It’s fine to keep eggplant at room temperature if you know you’re going to eat it within a day. But the best place to store eggplant is in the refrigerator crisper drawer, preferably in a paper, not plastic, bag. “That keeps it from sweating so much, which could lead to more decay,” Westerfield says.
Eggplant will start to go south after four or five days, so plan on using it—for your (or you mom’s) favorite dish—within that time.
