So, I'm watching one of my favorite mellow cooking shows, which is America's Test Kitchen. It's perfect to watch with my hubby while our little one takes a nap. While we're watching, the hosts whip out a 1.5 pound eggplant and talk about what to do to make eggplant actually useful in a dish. Because I love to cook, I started thinking about how many dishes that incorporate eggplant, and how every single one of them is insanely time-intensive.
Every. Single. One.
(For whatever reason, the eggplant is on my list today, so just bear with me as I get my rant about this out of my system.) Eggplant is nothing without the aid of delicious condiments. You don't just add a "dash" of something – you need a whole army of things to sacrifice everything to bring flavor to this greedy, spongy vegetable. It just takes and takes.
To make matters worse, it has to be be pampered and maintained. Don't let it bruise… the skin might be too tough for the dish, so you may have to peel it… make sure to salt slices to draw water from them… be careful not to let it oxidize… Don't do this, or it won't do that… wow.
At the end of it all, thanks to patience, luck, tears, and small miracles, you usually end up with a dish where the talentless Diva is polished and perfect… and becomes the star of the meal. Go figure. 😏
