What I Made: Eggplant with Pesto

I imagine that eating Styrofoam would remind me of eating raw eggplant. I find the spongy dryness of this vegetable completely unappealing. The seeds when cooked are slimy, and the taste was, for a long time, nothing to write home about.

Of course, it is naturally my Mother who has slowly begun to change my mind. Home alone, and with an eggplant in the fridge, and dozens of bags of frozen pesto, I took a cue from her and decided to make eggplant with pesto.

I guess long story short, I prefer the slimy version of eggplant to the spongy Styrofoamy one. Guess what you need to put on eggplant to make it palatable? (Of course I am speaking to anti-eggplant people.) Well first, you have to dice it up really small, to minimize the seediness and the slimy strings. If you dice it small enough, it becomes more of a sauce-like consistency, and the unattractiveness of the veggie is certainly mitigated.Then all you need to finish the magic trick is some of your Mom’s homemade pesto. If, for some weird reason, you do not have any of this on hand, you can substitute with olive oil, pine/walnuts, and basil, as well as salt and hopefully Parmesan cheese.

Because it is so very spongy, eggplant will soak up oil forever, and no matter how much you dump on, it always seems to disappear within a couple of seconds. That is why pesto is so great with eggplant: it is mostly oil! All I did was sautee the finely diced eggplant with oil and salt and pepper until they got nice and brown, and then dumped the pesto on. Presto, amazing dinner!