Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
plant. This is not to say that all eggplants are interchangeable. Eggplants vary in how thick
their skin is and how seedy they are, and they vary in the exact texture of their flesh. But
they don't vary much in flavor.
So the little green Thai eggplant, although it is very seedy and crunchy, tastes pretty
much like the small, thin Chinese "finger" eggplant, which has very few seeds, creamy
flesh and an amazingly thin skin. And that in turn tastes like the familiar blocky black egg-
plant, with its thick skin, coarse flesh and moderate amount of seeds. Furthermore, except
for the blackest of eggplants, the skin color fades during cooking, resulting in a muted
palette of shades of greenish beige.
W H E R E T H E Y' R E G ROW N: Eggplants are a pretty minor crop in the
United States. Production is fairly evenly split among Florida, California, Georgia, New
York and North Carolina. In fact, Mexico grows more of our eggplants than all of the Un-
ited States combined.
HOW T O CHOOSE: For a vegetable that can look like such a brute, eggplant is sur-
prisingly fragile. It bruises easily, and those bruises quickly turn bad. (Cut open a dented
eggplant, and you'll see that the flesh is brown and corky in the affected area.) It also loses
moisture quickly, leading to dry and pithy flesh. When choosing an eggplant, pick one that
is heavy for its size; that will be the freshest. Also feel the skin. If it is a round eggplant,
the skin should be taut and almost bulging. The long, thin eggplants found in Asian mar-
kets are often slightly softer, but they should not be so soft that the skin is wrinkling.
