How to cook eggplant

How to cook eggplant has been streamlined so that you can prepare this marvelous vegetable in just half an hour. The recipe below is especially for those who hate taking statins, but love their eggs, butter and cream. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it, if you regularly consume foods like these regularly.

Wherever the Indian tribes from the subcontinent have made a home for themselves in the diaspora, as in South Africa, it is known as a brinjal, and in Europe an aubergine. An eggplant by any other name would taste just as sweet.

Ratatouille and eggs Florentine.Eggs Florentine and ratatouille.

Ingredients

  • A chunk of butter, or olive-oil
  • 1 eggplant, thoroughly washed and diced into large-chunks
  • Half an onion, chopped
  • A couple cloves of garlic
  • 2  large, very-ripe tomatoes, washed and roughly chopped
  • 1 cup of chicken bones bouillon, or vegetable-broth
  • A handful of your favourite herbs
  • A tablespoon of capers and a touch of fish-paste are optional extras

Go for it

  1. Sweat the onion in butter on low-heat until translucent.
  2. Turn up the heat and brown the onions, and then add the eggplant, salt and pepper, and sauté for five to ten minutes until tender.
  3. Turn down the heat, add a slosh of olive-oil, the garlic and fish paste.
  4. Stir for a moment, and then add the tomatoes and bouillon, and simmer for another five-minutes.
  5. Stir in the capers and serve with a sprinkling of your parsley or sweet-basil.
Chopping onions.

Chopping the onions might seem obvious but there is an art to doing it quickly and efficiently so the sulphurous-acid vapours don't burn your eyes.

Cut the onion in half lengthways through the top to bottom. Snip off the tip, peel, but retain the root-end. Cut slices longitudinally, almost down to the chopping board.

Now cross-cut and finally remove the root end. Voilà, it is so simple.

tomato a day

A tomato a day keeps the urologist at bay. Dinkum, men who eat them daily have half the rate of the most nasty and prevalent tumours of the prostate. It all has to do with a phytochemical called a lycopene; the suggestion is that when cooked it is more readily absorbed in the intestine, especially with a little extra-fat.

It belongs to a group of phytochemicals called carotenoids that are antioxidants, protecting us from the dangerous effect of free-radicals. It is best enjoyed from pink and red foods like tomatoes, watermelon and papaya, rather than from supplements[1].

There is plenty of research showing that those who do not get adequate lycopene from their food are more prone to a host of serious diseases like macular-degeneration and Lou Gehrig's disease too but larger studies are needed to prove it conclusively.

In short eat more tomatoes, the richest-source; they partner so well with cooking eggplant.

How to cook eggplant

How to cook eggplant is a simple, basic ratatouille recipe. It is one small part of getting your cholesterol in shape by normal means without the use of statins.

The taste may need to be acquired but faced with the threat of impotence from statins the tongue is easily trained.

How to cook eggs Florentine

Ratatouille is not a complete meal; it is low on protein. In the photo above I have shown it alongside Eggs Florentine, another of our favourite dishes, poached on a bed of spinach.

More conventional ratatouille

The more conventional way to cook ratatouille is to add a zucchini and a sweet-pepper. Obviously that is fine, but you do have to cook it rather longer to drive off the extra moisture.

Personally I love bell-peppers, though not cooked for some reason. So I would rather use paprika or some chili.

Scientists are still trying to find out what the active ingredient in eggplants is that helps to lower cholesterol. Then it will not be long before you will be inundated with adverts to buy it as an expensive supplement. Myself I will stick with the philosophy of Hippocrates, the father of the healing-sciences; let your food be your medicine.

The other important foods that lower cholesterol are by the way, unrefined rolled-oats, chickpeas and an apple a day; all salads, vegetables and fruit too.

This fried eggplant recipe incidentally is my favourite way to enjoy a brinjal. Dipped in an egg-batter it is simply delicious, and just as quick to prepare and cook.

Another way to get the protein up, of course, is a more traditional eggplant parmesan.

  1. Lycopene at Medline Plus.

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