What’s in season: Eggplant

​Eggplant seems like a vegetable best buried under mountains of sauce and cheese. You can’t go wrong with eggplant parmesan. That’s a slimmed-down version of the dish in the photo above, with quick cooking directions below.

In picking out an eggplant at market, you want a firm, dark-colored vegetable with smooth and shiny skin. When you pick it up, it should feel lighter than you thought it might (pick up a few, this will make sense). Eggplants that are overripe will be soft and dull in color. The flesh is mushy and seedy — it’s the type of thing that turns people against what is essentially just a mild vegetable.

Eggplants come in colors and varieties from white to purple to deep black. The same vegetable can have several colors or striations. Raw eggplant is slightly bitter; that can be helped by degorging, in which you soak raw eggplant in salt water or heavily salt and then rinse sliced or chopped pieces.