Curiosity 19: Eggplant

This cartoon posted on FB made me chuckle:

Because it reminded me of when I was a teenager. My mother loved to cook, and to try out new recipes. Eggplant sometimes figured in, and I decided no, I didn't like eggplant. Perhaps I didn't care for the particular recipe(s) she was experimenting with, or maybe I was just being a naysaying teenager. Then again, cooking with eggplant can be tricky—keeping it from soaking up all the oil. Whatever the reason, eggplant was out, so far as I was concerned.

Then when I was 16, my mother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and they had to operate, take the organ out. Back in those days, one stayed in the hospital a little while. My mom's best friend stopped by one afternoon with a casserole (as one does). And it was delicious! Of course, nothing was said about its ingredients; my dad and I just ate it, gladly. When my mom got home, she asked me how I enjoyed the dish. "It was yummy!" And she smirked. "You know what was in it? Eggplant!" I just repeated: "It was yummy!" I wasn't about to get stuck in some made-up set-in-stone notion. It was yummy. I was super glad to be released from the belief that I didn't like eggplant.

(Hm, now that I type this, I'm wondering if that wicked mother of mine didn't actually put her friend up to it. She wouldn't! Would she?)

In a way, I credit that experience to my general adventurousness about food. I'll eat pretty much anything! 

Though I'm not crazy about cooked citrus. I attribute that to a recipe my mom tried out on us, Cambodian chicken, featuring poached kumquats. I've tried cooked citrus since, like in orange-cranberry sauce, and still: no. Just not my cuppa.

Because this iteration of my blog is about curiosity, I got to wondering just how many varieties of eggplant there are. Several cooking sites say 10 or 11, but Martha Stewart gives a full 17; here are the first few:

Fairy Tale, just 2–4 inches long
Prospera, an Italian heirloom—hard to overcook, perfect for parmigiana
Pingtung Long—up to 1 foot long, in fact
Beatrice, oval and squat, mild and creamy, great for baba ghanoush
Calliope, streaked white and purply-pink, 3 inches long by 2 wide
Nadia: what we Americans think of as a real eggplant, large and purplish-black

Go check out the website, where there are some lovely photos as well, and recipes! Here are the 17 varieties all together in one mixed-up mess of purples and pinks. Though I always love the white ones, living up to their (English) name, at least in color.

And to close, here is Still Life with Aubergines by Henri Matisse (1911), by way of a wink—which I'm sure is how he intended it (aubergines? what aubergines? and why?):