My Quest to Like or At Least Somewhat Enjoy Aubergine

Sometimes I feel like an inadequate “foodie”. I eat almost no meat, I rarely eat out.. and I bloody hate aubergines, OK?

At least I always thought I did, until I tried the baba ganoush from My Fresh Vegan Kitchen. That stuff was good. So this month, when all the coolest people in food suddenly seemed to be eating aubergine with every single meal, I thought I should give it another chance.

I started a Pinterest board and actually, really, properly set out to eat more aubergine. The first recipe that called to me was the Aubergine Katsu Curry from BBC Good Food.

The start of this recipe – dipping aubergine rounds first in a flour paste and then in breadcrumbs – was so god damn fiddly, and I was only using one aubergine (the original recipe serves 4 and calls for 2).

But once I got past that stage and onto frying them up then making the sauce it was easy as anything – I had no idea how simple a katsu curry sauce was.

My verdict on this dish is “oh my god this is delicious”. Like seriously, you all have to make this – it’s vegan too which is a bonus, I’ll definitely be bookmarking this one for Veganuary.

The only thing is though, I’m just not sure it could leave me saying I enjoyed the aubergine. Everything tastes delicious when it’s fried in oil and breadcrumbs.

I found something a little more challenging whilst flipping through Delicious. magazine and tried that next. Roasted aubergines (p.29 of this month’s issue) coated with Ras El Hanout – which I had leftover from some Abel & Cole recipes earlier this summer.

I didn’t use the whole recipe, just followed the instructions for roasting the aubergine. It was a seriously good meal, another vegan one too as I had it on Monday (Meat Free Mondays for me are usually vegan).

When I ventured out on my own with aubergine, recipe-less and reckless, and roasted it with green beans and garlic. That was when we truly became friends.

That was some good eatin’. With a little yoghurt, that green bean + garlic + aubergine trio was doing good things for me – this will definitely happen again in my kitchen

I think what I’ve established, though, is that aubergine really doesn’t have a hugely distinctive flavour. It’s great at absorbing other flavours and definitely adds something special to a dish, but I’d be hard pushed to describe the actual flavour of an aubergine to another human being.

Perhaps that’s just me.