Also known as aubergine, eggplant are a rich and flavoursome vegetable, lending themselves to many wonderful dishes. The regular variety have brilliant shiny purple skin, and are great chargrilled, baked, stuffed, barbequed, fried or used to make dips. Lebanese eggplants are also known as Japanese eggplants. They are small, thin eggplants, about the size of a zucchini. They have the same flavour as regular eggplant, and are most commonly used in Asian and middle Eastern dishes. Pea eggplant are small, green, pea-shaped eggplants. They contain lots of seeds and are quite bitter. They’re most commonly used in Thai and Indonesian dishes. All varieties of eggplant are available all year round.

To Buy

Look for eggplants with smooth, shiny skin. They should feel relatively heavy for their size, with no holes or splits in their skin.

To Store

Store eggplants in the crisper section of your fridge for 4 to 5 days

To Prepare

Wash eggplant, cut off the green stalk end then slice or dice as required. You can salt the flesh before cooking – this extracts any bitter juices (although bitterness is usually only present in very mature eggplant), as well as causing eggplant to soak up less oil during cooking. To do this, slice or chop eggplant then sprinkle with salt and stand in a sieve for half an hour. Rinse in cold water and pat dry then use in cooking.