Joyful Abode

Check out those eggplants and cucumbers! The cucumbers went into a delicious cucumber salad… just de-seed, chop, and toss with some fat-free sour cream, a sprinkling of ranch dressing mix (dry), and some rice vinegar. Very tasty!

Unfortunately, the eggplants had a less happy fate. Thankfully for all of us, I tossed this recipe in the trash, so you’ll never know just how bad it was. And I can’t re-find it in the blogosphere (as I only read, oh, about 100 cooking blogs), so I’ll just have to describe my recollection of it.

It started out nicely. The recipe instructed me to slice my eggplants and cook them in a pan in some olive oil with a sprinkling of salt.

I should have stopped there. I sneaked a piece and do you want to know how good it was? It was groan-inducing.

Instead, I continued with the recipe. There was some concoction of garlic, lemon juice, honey, ginger, and maybe some other stuff… can’t remember. The recipe said to heat it up until it was boiling, then put the eggplant back in and cook until the “sauce” reduced and thickened.

Well let me tell you,  eggplant shouldn’t be cooked that long. Unless maybe you’re making some sort of spread of baba ghanoush or something. It gets slimy and unpleasant. Also, while the flavors in the recipe sounded good on paper, the proportions (according to my unprofessional palate) were off… too much honey made the whole thing sickeningly sweet! This got a “no repeat” vote from both of us.

However, I don’t think it was a totally bad experience! Domesticity by trial and error means you have to learn from your ERRORS, right?

Well, I think a variation on this would probably work nicely… make a lemon/honey/ginger/garlic sauce (light on the honey, please) and brush it onto eggplant slices before cooking them in the pan, then sprinkle lightly with salt… no double-cooking, no waiting for a sauce to thicken while the eggplant deteriorates, no stomach-turning amounts of honey.

It might just be good. Anyone willing to give it a try? *wink*