All About Aubergines

A colour plate dating from the C19 in a little book about vegetables I picked up for £2.46 from Abebooks. Been waiting for it to appear cheap with free postage after it popped up somewhere as a recommendation. (I'm a sucker for little books with interesting illustrations and bits of random information!)

 

And 21st Century Aubergines from my greenhouse

Somewhere on line I read about their possible health benefits

  Full of vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre and with the potential to lower cholesterol and help manage weight, aubergines are a great choice for salads, stews and beyond. .
Aubergines are rich in antioxidants, specifically nasunin  found in aubergine skin - which gives it its purple colour. ( I know someone who doesn't eat the skins - better tell them about this!) A potent antioxidant and free radical scavenger, nasunin has been found to protect the lipids (fats) in brain cell membranes. Cell membranes are almost entirely composed of lipids and are responsible for protecting the cell and helping it to function. The lipid layer is crucial for letting nutrients in, wastes out and receiving instructions from messenger molecules that tell the cell what to do.

 Aubergines are very ancient vegetables first recorded in India where it is called Brinjal. In Spanish it is Berengenas (apples of Love), Aubergines  here or Eggplants in the USA (they were originally white and smaller), are members of the the nightshade family Solanaceae.

On the history of Aubergines........ Wiki says..........
 The aubergine is unrecorded in England until the 16th century. An English botany book in 1597 described the madde or raging Apple:

This plant groweth in Egypt almost everywhere... bringing foorth fruite of the bignes of a great Cucumber.... We have had the same in our London gardens, where it hath borne flowers, but the winter approching before the time of ripening, it perished: notwithstanding it came to beare fruite of the bignes of a goose egge one extraordinarie temperate yeere... but never to the full ripenesse.

Because of the plant's relationship with various other nightshades, the fruit was at one time believed to be extremely poisonous.(Like tomatoes and potatoes were when they were first brought here) The flowers and leaves can be poisonous if consumed in large quantities due to the presence of solanine.

 Originally they were really bitter and needed salting and draining before eating but in Europe and the Americas the bitterness has been bred out. In Africa and oriental cooking there are still some bitter varieties that are used.

And as  it's such an old and widely used vegetable there are recipes from many cultures and it can be steamed, stir-fried, pan fried, deep fried, barbecued, roasted, baked, stewed, curried, stuffed or pickled.

 I've been growing them for many years now, although before I started growing them I'd never eaten one.  I start seeds in the electric propagator in early March, then pot up into small pots and keep in at night until the weather is warm enough to leave them in the greenhouse all night.They go into bigger pots and need plenty of water and before producing the first fruits which are ready just before mid July.

I use them in a few recipes but my favourite is to make a big batch of pasta sauce using aubergines, onions, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, garlic puree and black pepper. (there's a courgette chucked in there too this time as I'm adding them to everything!). Portioned up and in the freezer for quick meals later in the year.

 

There's never a mention anywhere of the very vicious short spines on the green calyx so that aubergines need cutting from the plant with scissors and carrying into the kitchen very carefully.

 

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Sue