Eggplant

Let me tell you a little about my relationship with this member of the nightshade bunch. I have from a young age professed to dislike this vegetable. It was purple, after all, but didn't have the decency to remain purple all the way through. This was worrisome to me. Don't ask me why apples are okay.

Perhaps it was the fluffy, spongy, tofu-like texture of the thing. It was tough enough to cut into, but that was fake. Its inner side was more like an incredibly dry cucumber. Don't ask me why cucumbers, even the dry ones, are okay.

Or maybe it was the seeds, all scattered around in there like you couldn't get them out. Truly impossible to deseed an eggplant, really. You'd lose all the fleshy bit in the middle. Don't ask me why watermelons are okay.

Finally, I think, the name had some part to play. Eggplant. Egg-plant. Plant of egginess. The eh rolling off the tongue, followed by the hard gg, even the sound spells egg to me. I like eggs. Egg-plant. A vegetable ovum, with purple outer shell, slippery flesh surrounding the pearl of yolk. But this appellation was a lie. The eggplant had no part of the egg. They weren't even distant relations. I hate it when vegetables lie about their pedigree. Don't ask me why pineapples are okay.

Above all this, I despised the eggplant for the same reason I've always categorically hated zucchini, or in fact, all squash and squash-like creations. (there's no need to ask me why pumpkins are okay; i hated them too.) I vividly recall a dinner eaten in San Antonio, with my grandparents presiding, my mother, brother and me in attendance. (i say vividly, but i do not recall my father at the table, though it seems he must have been there. if you are reading this, dad, i apologize. it must be that my brother your son was in my boat, while the grandparents your parents-in-law were the choppy waters, and my mother your wife was the wood of the boat that kept the meal at bay. perhaps you were an oar.)

But to cease the digression, we sat at the round kitchen table before octagonal white china and octagonal dark glasses while dinner was lovingly placed before us. Once again, I cannot recall a particular part of this meal, but it is because the part I am most interested in was one dish. The "squash." It was yellow-white, and frothy. It resembled nothing so much as the brownish-greenish bubble-scum I would scrape from the surface of the water near the shallows with a handy stick when my father would take me fishing. The "squash" had, of course, been bleached prior to its flight to the table.

No matter. This vile dish was placed before me with the command to eat. I would not. There were words. My mother came to my defense (and here i suppose it is necessary to say that she also defended my brother, who as i've said, was in the same boat). She said that food was not a battle in her household. Grandmother was put out by this, and words continued. My memory grows faint at this point, and I cannot recall whether I'd been made to consume a spoonful of the squash scum, or whether dinner progressed with a thick silence and no squash.

I remember one other time in my childhood where squash played a role. My mother had taken my brother and myself on an airplane, a large one, with a center aisle. It was a dark flight, unless I'm mixing two different trips. We played mini-Trouble, game of my childhood. But we also ate airplane salad, which had nice thick pieces of cucumber, trimmed at four points to interrupt the dark green edging. It also had what I considered to be yellow cucumbers, trimmed the same way. I ate the green and the yellow.

My mind tells me that the yellow cucumber was squash of the zucchini-shaped but thoroughly yellow variety I sometimes see in the produce aisle. And a point: had they told me the squash scum was boiled cucumber, I would not have eaten it. I knew, to a certainty, that the dish served that night was toxic to my very soul. At the very least, it was yucky. Or in my tongue at the time, "It tastes sour to me."

I've since consumed squash, of both the green and yellow varieties in a number of vegetable sides, and in bread, of course. It's been steamed, grilled, raw in salads, baked, roasted. Never will I touch it boiled. It tastes sour to me.

My mother once brought home an eggplant, to return to the main idea here. I do not remember where she got it, whether from garden, or neighbor, or store. Perhaps it turned up one day, lonesome, in a basket by the front door, wearing a sign that inspired pity in my mother. I doubt I'll ever know, because I doubt she had any cause to recall that particular eggplant in what must have been a long sea of eggplants.

I watched cautiously as she washed it, peeled it, sliced it thin. As she slid each piece into the flour, and baked a sheet of eggplant disks. I was certain they would be horrible, despite my father's eagerness to eat them. When they came from the oven, and had cooled, we ate them. They were not horrible, but I could not eat more than a token amount. The sour taste from my memories was still as potent as ever.

The culmination of this rambling tale of eggplants and their somewhat kin is that I brought home an eggplant a few days ago. I do know where this one came from, or at least I know the latter stages of its journey. I lovingly chose it alone out of its bretheren to be my own, sweet eggplant. I wrapped it in a bag and nestled it among the bread loaves, careful not to damage its lusterous purple complexion.

I pulled it out three or four times a day to study it. I wondered what I would do with it, now that I had it. How could I prepare this thing, so beautiful in its present, yet so hideous in my past?

At last, I searched for a recipe that would make proper use of my eggplant. I came across a very many nasty dishes that relied on turning my eggplant into scum. I was to boil it, and mash it, and mound it into a pie shell. I was to chop it finely and stir it in a hot skillet with oil until it "cooked down." I was to slice it into long strips and fry it like bacon.

Finally, I decided to slice it into coins and brown it in a skillet. Oil, I found, was guzzled in an unhealthy way, and turned my eggplant so soggy and translucent that for all my attempts to discard ancient grudges, I could not bear to taste a single sodden sliver. The remaining slices were dry-browned, and came out like a faintly sweet, faintly nutty toast. I could have made a meal of my eggplant there, and been satisfied.

Nevertheless, I cooked some onions, mushrooms, and olives into a lovely gummy mess, stirred up some tomato sauce into a pound of ground beef, grated a considerable amount of cheese, and boiled some noodles. The lasagna took some masterful assembly, but was ready to bake. Instead, I covered it, put it in the fridge, and waited until after work today to put the final touches on this meal.

It isn't too bad. It tastes just fine. Wonderful, in fact. But I have to say I'm disappointed that my eggplant, browned gloriously just yesterday, turned traitor in the oven and became just another soggy squash. Many would consider that its due purpose in life (or in death rather, as one can hardly call a cooked eggplant anything but a dead eggplant) and be pleased by the outcome. I had somehow expected it to hold its lovely firmness.

I eat my lasagna in layers. Everyone who has watched me eat lasagna knows this, and many tease me about it. But one of the beauties of lasagna is that comprises at least four different flavors in one dish. The mixing and matching, the experimentation, the joy of exploration... I truly love lasagna. I cannot eat this one in layers. Every layer but the star ingredient is excellent. But I cannot abide the gummy eggplant by itself. It must be disguised by the gooey cheese, the thick, rich sauce, the onion mixture. The taste is good. The texture not. And we all know by now that I'm a texture person.

Love and Peace (poor, poor eggplant)