Aubergine — My Sight

Last month it was all about tomatoes. A few months before that, garlic. This month, it’s eggplant that’s been capturing my attention down in the garden.

Pentax K-1, 100mm, 1/100 @f/5.0, ISO 800

For most of the spring, it grows slowly. Barely changing. Then one day the flowers appear. Dozens of beautiful purple and pink umbrellas, hiding among the dark green leaves. Dots of color to brighten the garden.

Then the summer heat begins to hit. One day you notice the plant has doubled in size. Seemingly overnight. The leaves have grown thick and broad, a leathery canopy shading the interior. Flowers still hide among the leaves, but here and there petals have fallen. Tiny bulbs emerge from the flower’s thorny crown (or “sepal”) the beginning of summer fruit. As the bulbs grow larger they gain patterns and change color, shifting from pale gray to soft pink to inky purple.

As I wander down in the garden it’s often easy to pass the eggplant by. The flowers and globes are mostly hidden in the shaded interior, and don’t scream for attention like other nearby plants. It is only when I stop and sit that I enter the world beneath the leaves, marveling at the abundance and beauty of its fruit. (Yes, the eggplant is a fruit, not a vegetable. In fact, technically it’s a berry. Google it!).

As the weather gets hotter, the eggplants grow large. They are growing quickly now, presenting something new to see and photograph each day. Finding a composition among the stalks and leaves is challenging, but rewarding. The heavy fruit rests among a forest of stems and dying flowers, one globe nestled against another. Thick leaves droop down, obscuring the view. Peer in here, poke over there, look high, look low, small movements often reveal new views between the leaves. (Shallow depth of field and macro lenses help simplify the chaos.) Beauty lurks in the shadows. Rough textures, twisted shapes, and pearlescent shades of purple, green and pink. There is something a bit alien under there, a fantasy landscape from another world.

Pentax K-1, 100mm, 1/125 @ f/3.5, ISO 800

Every year I plant two or three eggplants in the garden. They seem to like the weather in our backyard, where afternoon temperatures regularly climb into the 80s and 90s despite the morning fog. This year it was harder to find eggplants at the local garden centers. I ended up with two: “Black Beauty,” a globe-type heirloom variety originally from India; and “Millionaire,” a long skinny Japanese hybrid. Each puts out dozens of eggplants at a time. One or two healthy plants can produce more than enough fruit to continue feeding a family throughout the summer.

There are hundreds of varieties of eggplant to grow and thousands of recipes to choose from. Slice it thin, throw it on the grill with a little olive oil and salt, blister it for a few minutes on each side and serve it with grilled chicken or fish. Cube a globe and roast it with onions, peppers, squash, tomatoes and garlic, then toss everything with olive oil, herbs and salt and you’ve got a wonderful ratatouille. Halve a Japanese eggplant, sauté it quickly on both sides until it softens then spread the cut side with a bit of miso paste thinned with mirin, sugar and sake and broil or grill it for a few minutes for a marvelous Nasu Dengaku. Skewer chunks of eggplant with lamb or chicken on a kebab. Bread it and bake it then layer it in a casserole with some tomato sauce and cheese for a satisfying eggplant parm. Blacken it on the grill then scoop out the flesh and mix it with tahini, lemon juice, yogurt and garlic and you’ve got a smoky Baba Ganoush. This week I made eggplant “meat”balls. Delicious. (Just sauté some eggplant cubes with onion and garlic then pulse it with cooked white beans and panko in a food processor to form it into balls that can be baked for about a half an hour ‘til brown, then served with your favorite tomato sauce.)

Thanks for reading. Check out the Garden gallery to see more images of eggplants and other things that have been growing in my garden. If you want more, check out the Road Trips, Play and Out & About galleries for some new images from recent trips to Santa Cruz, Pt. Reyes and other places around the Bay.