In my childhood, I always hated those mushy and so disgusting tasting eggplants/aubergine. But for some reason, because of a kind of food with an eggplant in it, I started to think that eggplant isn’t that bad after all. Then slowly, I turned into an eggplant loving maniac.
The first eggplant based dish I ever eat was probably my mom’s sour spicy eggplants. It‘s probably because of that, I started to dislike and hate eggplants. It was very mushy, wet, slimy, and ugh, it really made me feel gross and it’s even worse when it’s cold. Just pretty sickening.
In my first college years, I went out to eat with friends. And some of them ordered deep fried eggplants with spicy sauce. At first, I asked “is that really taste great?”, and they said they didn’t like it before but for some reason they really love deep fried eggplants with the spicy sauce. I didn’t ate it that time, however, the next time I went out to eat with them again, I tried again, and oh, boy, you can say that I was so hooked with it. For days, months, years, I kept eating them most of the time than not. I ate them with fried egg, which might cause some of my allergic reactions to it, because of how often I eat it with the eggplants.
The next time I ate eggplants, it wasn’t that bad, but I can’t not love the deep fried eggplant with spicy sauce. Then, when my mom made the mushy eggplant dish again, I realised that dish doesn’t really represent how delicious eggplants are. My mom made them way to salty, sour, garlicky, and she really overcooked them (hence, the mushy texture). I think eggplants have subtle flavour, and it really supplements and support the other ingredients together. Like spicy sauce, it taste way better with the eggplants compared to with chicken for example.
Then I encountered this dish called mabo nasu, which is basically mabo tofu but with eggplants instead. So delicious. I keep craving for them, and I missed that dish so damn much. The Japanese and Chinese flavour mix is just too good. Sometimes I put additional Szechuan spicy paste too, and it really tasty. I tried to recreate the dish taste using what I have, but haven’t been really successful with it. But it still does taste so good. After getting back from Japan, I really missed mabo nasu very very much. I loved that local eggplants cost so little here (around twenty US cents for two medium sized eggplants), compared to when I was in Japan (around 3 dollars for three of the same sized ones).
Eggplants really taste great with Chinese and Japanese influenced flavours, like sour and sweet sauce, teriyaki, and others. Basically the whole Asia flavours, including South East Asian flavours. Gosh, sorry for me nerd out about a vegetable that is pretty common yet pretty hated by childrens (you can google about that).
I really love eggplants now, even though I’ve hated them before! That was my story. What do you think about eggplants?
