OH, AUBERGINE!

Some of us – especially men, I think – feel entitled to a personal indulgence at or around middle age. Kind of pathetic, but there it is. You know you’ve swallowed your pride when you’re willing to accept a consolation prize from yourself. I always thought mine would be a motorcycle – even took the course, got my licence, and priced out a little Suzuki TU250 that would perhaps not make me appear too desperate. But I ended up feeling more risk-averse, more time-constrained, and also more budget-conscious than I had anticipated. A few years went by, and after zooming safely past the plausible midway point in a natural lifespan (even assuming fortuitous genetic and socio-economic factors), I sought out a subtler signifier of masculine coolness. God help me, this summer I bought a gas barbecue.

Not a replacement barbecue, or an upgrade, but my first one – which is quite unusual, because these household appliances have become almost as common as toasters. Their popularity really flared up during the COVID-19 pandemic, when those accustomed to eating at restaurants were forced to eke out a bit of pleasure from cooking and dining at home. I suspect that the division of labour – one person outside tending the flames, the other person in the kitchen doing the real work of meal prep – helped to maintain peace and civility in many house-bound families.

For a quarter century, I grilled food on a primitive stone hearth out back – not much more than a fire pit, really. Harbouring a conceit that using purchased charcoal would be cheating, I burned odds and ends from the firewood pile. Building up a bed of coals thus required a great deal of patience – and a great deal of trotting to and from the house, when I was cooking single-handedly. Moreover, periods of drought, and the attendant fire bans, seemed to be occurring more frequently, sometimes extinguishing our plans for a feast of seared meat on a summer evening.

Still, I wasn’t crazy about the idea of owning a gas barbecue. I found them to be unattractive, and probably as badly built as today’s toasters, given how frequently they appear at the roadside for municipal garbage pickup. When I finally let go of my resistance, I chose a model that seemed relatively robust, and also small enough to be a discreet presence in the backyard – even portable, for occasional use at the woods camp. It’s rated at 12,000 BTU, if that means anything to you – truly a sub-compact, in a marketplace of Escalade-level barbecues that range up to 80,000 BTU and beyond.

As a late adopter of this bourgeois amenity, I faced a learning curve. An adapter would be needed, to allow for the use of a 20-pound tank instead of those disposable canisters. I acquired a tank, but then had to figure out how to get it filled. This felt like buying a case of beer for the first time (back when you had to ask for it by name, and the clerk behind the counter would repeat your order into a microphone, prompting an unseen worker in the back room to fetch the box of brewskies and slide it along the steel rollers, producing a joyful cascade of rattling and clinking). I knew I was in the right place when I spotted a young dude wearing flip-flops and a backward ballcap, tank in hand. He nodded and smiled in a way that made me feel I was being welcomed into the brotherhood of barbecue enthusiasts, and soon both of us were fuelled up and on our way.

I don’t have much interest in the culture of grilling, with all its rubs and brines and aromatic wood chips. Seems needlessly complicated. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with Nova Scotia lamb chops – as long as you don’t overcook them. Cubes of beef, pork, or chicken work great on skewers, as do cherry tomatoes, and pieces of pepper, onion, and mushrooms, drizzled with a basic vinaigrette. Unskewer them onto a bed of rice, top with some garlicky yogurt sauce, and Bob’s your uncle. Some people grill slabs of tofu, and I intend to give that a try too.

One of the pleasant surprises was discovering how easy it is to make delicious roasted sweet potatoes, by cutting them in slices and brushing them with oil before cooking. With the lid closed, our tiny barbecue reaches 400 degrees Fahrenheit very quickly, which makes me think it may actually be more energy efficient than the oven. (Still looking for data on that.)

But my favourite food to grill, at the moment, is eggplant. I don’t expect to get a broad consensus on this, because eggplant is a bit divisive. You could say it’s a wedge vegetable – though it should not be cut in wedges, but in inch-thick slices, to better allow the copious amounts of moisture to be cooked out of its sponge-like flesh. (In botanical terms, it is actually a berry, like its nightshade cousin the tomato.)

At the local farm stand where we often pick up some sweet corn, the modest selection of produce now includes eggplants – something you wouldn’t have seen around here a generation ago. From a purely aesthetic perspective, they are irresistible, with their voluptuous form and their glossy purple skin.

A few times we have succeeded in growing some nice specimens in the garden, but it ain’t easy. They need an early start and a good hot summer, in order to ripen by September. In this climate, extending the season by growing them in greenhouses is the best hope for ramping up production. Asian and Indian varieties, which come in different shapes and colours, are becoming increasingly popular in Canada, as new culinary traditions take root here. The Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, in Ontario, has trialled some of them as field crops and in hydroponic systems, with an eye to displacing some proportion of eggplant imports.

The name “eggplant” likely came from varieties that are white in colour. The French aubergine, derived from the Arabic al-bāḏinjān, was adopted in the U.K. (just as zucchini is known as courgette in British English), and this word is also used to refer to a dark purple hue. In Italian cuisine, the classic dish is parmigiana di melanzane (eggplant parmesan). The Greek counterpart is moussaka, topped with eggy bОchamel sauce instead of cheese. (The vegetarian version in the 1977 Moosewood Cookbook, featuring mushrooms in lieu of ground lamb, is also very good.) I choose these luxurious casseroles pretty much anytime they are on offer, because I’m too lazy to make them myself.

Grilling eggplant, on the other hand, is dead easy. The raw slices are so absorptive, you could get carried away slathering them with olive oil – but some experimentation will help you get a final consistency that suits you, ranging from somewhat meaty to borderline slimy. (I lean toward the latter – which could be a reflection of my poor character.) Once they are well browned on both sides, and tender right through, they can be served as a side dish, tossed with pasta or rice, used as a topping for burgers or pizza, or purОed in the blender (with some garlic and lemon juice and tahini) to make the dip known as baba ghanoush.

With its hint of bitterness, which can be countered with cumin, eggplant is one of the fundamental flavours of the Mediterranean. It is not a particularly nutritious food, but it is high in fibre and low in calories. In many dishes, it is a vehicle for great quantities of delicious fats. It’s essentially an indulgence – and one I richly deserve. Happy September! DL