Southern-Fried Eggplant

There is a very small farmer's market on a main road not far from where I live. It is sponsored by a local church, and held in their parking lot. The farmer is from nearby, so everything is extremely local. It's supposed to run from 8 am until 12 pm every Saturday until September. But, as the farmer told me, you have to get there early if you want to get the best selection. It's true. By 10 AM there's not much left, but I've always managed to get some good produce every time. One vegetable that has always been available has been eggplant. I've bought a couple each time I've gone. So, today, I'm going to try my hand at frying. The only thing I've ever fried has been an egg - and I do make a mean fried egg sandwich, just the way my grandfather taught me.

After reading over the recipe, this frying doesn't seem too bad. It's not deep-frying - I'm going to need some moral support for that! The recipe calls for just an inch of oil. I think the bacon I sometimes cook has more oil (or would that be fat?) than this recipe requires. So, now I'm thinking, "Okay. I've got this. No big deal!"

I have to be honest, though. The one thing I do not like about eggplant - and the reason it's always been relegated to a day when I don't have to work - is that you have to salt the cut eggplant and sometimes soak it for at least 30 minutes. It takes a bit of forethought, but it is well worth it. Salting it helps extract the bitterness.

Eggplant has a wonderfully creamy flesh when it's been cooked. Cutting it into sticks and frying it will bring a nice juxtaposition of textures - crisp meets creamy.

Once it was time to actually do this recipe, I ran into issues. My first trouble was peeling the eggplant. I gave up on the peeler pretty quickly and just used my large paring knife. Even that proved difficult. I only peeled one eggplant and left the other one as is. The directions said to cut into thin slices, I interpreted that as sticks for some reason.

These needed to soak for 30 minutes in a salt water bath. This is when I found out that eggplant floats! This was a key step, though. The water turned brown from the soaking.

After draining, I added salt and pepper and let the sticks sit while I prepped the egg dredge and flour. The recipe called for plain flour, but I added some pepper and garlic powder.

Remember how I thought this wasn't actually deep-frying? Turns out, I was mistaken. I only did a little bit of the prepped eggplant in the oil on the stove. The rest got rolled in seasoned bread crumbs and baked. I definitely do not like frying, but I'll learn as I go. Thankfully, I have someone at home who knows his way around the kitchen and he helped me fry the few that were floured. I now know this cookbook is not for a novice cook, but I also have someone here willing to teach me how to do things when I don't exactly know what I'm doing.

These are delicious, and really worth the effort and time. They're just as predicted - super creamy inside, crispy outside.

Happy eating, y'all!