Eggplant is the new black

For quite a few years, Brian and I have both been big fans of eggplant. It's not the most flavorful of veggies, but it makes a good carrier for other flavors, and it has a tender, melt-in-the-mouth texture. Brian had a handful of trusty eggplant recipes that he made over and over again, like grilled vegetable sandwiches, mujadara with eggplant, baingan bharta (Indian-spiced eggplant), pasta melanzane (pasta with eggplant, tomato, and mozzarella), and eggplant with string beans in garlic sauce. Every so often he'd try something new, like quinoa-eggplant salad, tofu with eggplant, or Thai eggplant with Soy Curls, but most of these recipes weren't interesting enough to make it into his regular repertoire.

Unfortunately, all his tried-and-true favorites had one thing in common: carbohydrates. Either they were themselves high in carbs, or they had to be served over a starchy bed of rice. So when I had my new reduced-carb diet thrust upon me, most of these old favorites became unusable. If Brian wanted to keep cooking with his favorite vegetable, he'd need to find some ways to work it into dishes that were lower in carbs and higher in protein and non-starchy vegetables.

So, in the past two weeks, Brian has developed a new use for eggplant: Put it in basically everything.

What he figured out is that eggplant's mild flavor and soft texture allows it to melt rather unobtrusively into the background of all kinds of other dishes. So if he wants to add more veggies to any existing recipe, throwing in some eggplant is an easy way to do it. In the past week alone, he's successfully added eggplant to both pad Thai and chili, boosting their non-starchy vegetable content without compromising their flavor. I could tell the eggplant was there — every now and again I'd come across a tender little morsel of something and go, "What's this? Oh, eggplant. Hm, interesting." But it had no significant effect on the meal as a whole. It was just...there.

So it looks like eggplant is going to become a staple food on our shopping list from now on. Rather than something we buy when we have a specific recipe in mind we want to make, it will be something that we always have on hand to throw into any dish that needs a little vegetable boost. It'll be an extra in the background of the crowd scene, rather than the star of the show.

Of course, I would like it if I could still find a way to enjoy some of our old favorites that use eggplant in a starring role, as well. But unfortunately, adapting those recipes isn't as simple as just increasing the proportion of eggplant to other ingredients. Because while eggplant can certainly be delicious, it isn't very solid. There's only so much of it you can cram into a sandwich or a bowl of pasta before it kind of loses its structural integrity. So in order to adapt our old eggplant dishes, we'll need to find lower-carb substitutes for the bread, pasta, and rice that used to provide the bulk of the meal. Cauliflower rice, maybe?