Recipe: Breaded Eggplant 'Fries'

I have come across another produce issue while house-sitting for my parents: fridge veg.

Mum was very nice and left me with a full fridge, but the fridge is not full of stuff I normally cook. I'm used to cooking broccoli, peppers, mushrooms, but I've never cooked an eggplant. And what is one girl meant to do with an entire cauliflower? There's something I think may be bok choy, there was something squishy and runny in a bag (that got thrown out), and something else mysterious.

I decided to tackle the eggplant first. I love the internet, because I can search so many recipes so easily. Don't get me wrong, I love books (and have a pretty good cookbook selection growing) but the internets are so convenient! And also educational. I found out that the eggplant is a member of the nightshade family (eek!), and is a close relative of tobacco (double eek!) and because of the latter fact, the seeds contain nicotine. I cut them out when I read that, although Wikipedia assures me that the seeds are edible, and the nicotine is negligible. I'd have to eat 20 pounds of eggplant to get the nicotine equivalent of one cigarette.

The world 'eggplant' developed in Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Most of the rest of the world uses 'aubergine', unless you're in India, where they call it 'brinjal'.

I also learned that to tell if an eggplant is ripe, press the pad of your thumb against the eggplant. If it bounces back, it's ripe. Too ripe if the indent stays.

Thusly armed with knowledge, I decided to go with this recipe from Joyful Abode.

A note on breadcrumbs:
This being my mum's kitchen, I wasn't sure what I'd find in the cupboards, and I really didn't feel like going out to buy more groceries, to make a recipe I chose in the first place to use stuff up. I found a jar (unlabeled, of course) of what I guessed was wheat germ. I couldn't find any bread crumbs (apart from the crumbs collecting at the bottom of a bag of crutons) so I did a deep cupboard search. I found a collection of bags that I believe to be from when my grandpa lived here, and were used for his grainy, mushy cereal. They were all crumbly, and full of fibre, and I am all about the whole grains, so instead of bread crumbs, I used a mix of cracked wheat, bran, crumbs from the cruton bag, and a touch of psyllium fibre (I'm not even sure what that is, but I was in an adventurous mood!).

Breaded Eggplant 'Fries'

• 1 large eggplant
• 1/2 cup toasted wheat germ (I didn't bother toasting, because I wasn't sure what I had was actually wheat germ)
  
• 1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs (or random mix of other flaky kitchen things)
  
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
• 3 eggs, beaten (I think I could've gotten away with two)

Preheat the broiler (mum's automatically came on at 550 degrees).

Cut eggplant into little french-fry like wedges, and then if you want to, you can salt them with Kosher salt to draw out the bitter juices. The way I did it this time was to put the wedges into a colander over a bowl, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt, and top with a smaller colander weighted with the Kosher salt box, so the eggplant pieces were squished. (I did this. Don't know if made a difference, but the fries weren't bitter)

Mix together your crumbs, cheese, and salt in a bowl.

When your eggplant sticks are ready, rinse or wipe off the salt and pat dry with towels. Then dip each stick into the beaten eggs, and roll in the breadcrumb/wheat germ mixture. Place on a cookie sheet prepared with cooking spray.

Broil for 2-3 minutes, flip the sticks, then broil for 2-3 more minutes, or until crispy. I tried 3 minutes the first time, and that was enough to set of the smoke alarm.

The first night, I ate these with mum's mustard collection (Provencal red pepper mustard, tarragon mustard, and good ol' Dijon), and a blob of pesto for a rest from the heat.
The next day, I heated the leftovers up in the oven (microwave would've turned them to mush), and dipped them in Thai-style peanut sauce.