Ode to the eggplant

For a long time people were afraid to eat eggplant, as it is a member of the nightshade family and was considered poisonous. It is unclear HOW people back then knew it was a member of the nightshade family, as it no more resembles a tomato or other nightshade plants than does a seahorse, and it's not like plants go around advertising their family relationships.

Personally I think it would have been for the best to leave things at that as far as the eggplant is concerned, and to go on thinking it was too dangerous to attempt to eat it. Our CSA clearly believes otherwise, judging from the continual stream of eggplant they keep sneaking into our weekly basket, like a parent sneaking vegetables into her children's muffins. Both are probably punishable offenses.

Much of our late summer has been spent desperately trying to find a way to cook eggplant so that its texture is more like actual food than worn rubber tires. As part of this effort, eggplant has been roasted, grilled, breaded and fried, cut up in small pieces and hidden among other, less tire-like vegetables, smothered in cheese, smothered in chocolate, and deliberately abandoned in the bottom of the vegetable bin in the fridge. ("Oh, look, it's too far gone to eat now. Too bad.")

We were ready to make a formal request to the appropriate scientific body that eggplant be removed from the nightshade family and placed in the rubber plant family. It could, perhaps, live a long and fruitful life as playground surfacing material ("Fewer injuries with poured eggplant!").

But then a friend, taking pity on our eggplant despair, insisted I try a recipe for eggplant tomato purée for pasta. She herself made it "way too often." I immediately recognized the possibilities in roasting an eggplant and tomatoes, pureeing them together beyond recognition, and mixing it all with a ridiculous amount of red pepper flakes, Parmesan, and noodles. Excellent. No evidence to suggest that there had ever BEEN an eggplant, except a tiny stray remnant of peel here and there.

The eggplant kept coming from the CSA, and the puree followed. It doubled as a cracker dip, went to all our social gatherings, filled up our freezer. Its popularity soared. And then, somehow, there didn't seem to be as many social gatherings to which to take the eggplant purée. Odd.

But there is no foreseeable end to the eggplant. It is in season until October. Clearly, it is time for a different way to deal with the next eggplant to appear in our basket, so we have determined to use it in a time-honored fashion: put it on someone's porch, knock on the door, and run like crazy.