If you Google the term 'Asian eggplant', a wonderful world of Asian-style recipes will open up before you.
Specifically in style of Thailand, China, and the Philippines. I definitely recommend moving your culinary cheese in this context, as eggplant is truly a vegetable with a million faces and uses that can both masquerade as many other things and possess a unique taste and character that cannot be imitated.
The title of our weekly post does not refer to East Asian cuisine but rather to the specific variety of eggplant that stars in our box this week – Asian eggplant.
I will address this variety shortly, but first a word of caution: when it comes to names and titles of varieties, the territory is sometimes hazy and deceptive. Often it is a matter of local branding that does not always align with reality.
I confess that I could not find the Latin name of the eggplant we call 'Asian eggplant'. In any case, it is an eggplant that comes in various sizes and shapes, from elongated and narrow versions to almost spherical eggplants.
The prominent feature of this eggplant is its color. It is much closer to a shade of lilac compared to the purple-black eggplants we usually encounter and sometimes it is mottled with white spots.
As mentioned, I am not 100% certain about its origin, but from what I have seen, it mostly resembles a variety known worldwide as 'Chinese eggplant', so this fits quite well. In general, the word Asia in the context of eggplant is not precise.
One fact we know with certainty about this amazing plant from the Solanaceae family is that it originated from Africa. True, it migrated from there thousands of years ago and according to one theory, this occurred thanks to elephants, who just like us humans and like eggplants – originated in Africa.
According to this thesis, elephants ate eggplants, expelled seeds while… (yes, let's call it 'attending to their needs') and thus, together with the elephants that migrated out of Africa to the Asian region, eggplants also spread toward Asia.
Hence, just as we have 'Asian elephants', we also have 'Asian eggplants'. Moreover, all the eggplant varieties we know and appreciate today are the result of the development and cultivation that took place outside Africa. It is not at all clear whether the original wild varieties possessed the characteristics of the eggplant which we know today. This includes its size and the purple-black pigment.
We can learn this even from the common English name for eggplant — Eggplant (literally eggplant). The first varieties Europeans encountered were eggplant bushes that produced small white fruits – resembling eggs, and this has stuck to this day.
In any case, the Asian eggplant is a wonderful eggplant and it's always nice to encounter new varieties with distinctive forms especially when they come from our organic farmers.
You can do with Asian eggplant everything you normally do with eggplant, but now this post has given me a craving for Asian food. So with your permission, I will return to the kitchen and prepare a new recipe for a Thai dish of eggplant and papaya.
