Why aubergines are the next big superfood
The purple reign has begun with aubergine displacing avocados as the food of the moment due to its flavor and nutritional qualities
Kale has wilted. The avocado is over-cado. Cauliflower has become uncool-iflower. Yes, adjust your salads and alert your #eatclean hashtags. They have all been replaced as the hottest ingredient in the kitchen by an unlikely, hitherto unsung hero: the humble aubergine. The eggplant, as our American cousins insist on calling it.
From food to cyber-flirting, beauty to Broadway, wardrobes to walls, the veg du jour’s purple reign looks set to continue.
Just last week, Aubergine took the New York theatre scene by storm. We don’t mean a giant one rolled down Broadway, bringing traffic to a standstill — although that would have been quite an event too — but that Julia Cho’s new play Aubergine opened to rave reviews. A homage to family gatherings and the power of food, it’s already being tipped for awards and a film adaptation.
So what of the glossy purple veg from which Cho’s play takes its name? Well, that’s having a moment too. The punningly-minded could call it a purple patch.
Aubergine’s resurgence is mainly thanks to the Middle Eastern food trend, spearheaded by Yotam Ottolenghi. The influential Israeli-born super-chef is a passionate aubergine devotee — he calls it “the mighty aubergine” — arguing that they might be known as “poor man’s meat” but are actually a “vegetarian’s rich treat”.
Ottolenghi points to dishes like classic Turkish stew imam bayildi (which translates as “the imam fainted”, after the legend that an imam passed out with pleasure upon tasting it) and hünkar begendi (“sultan’s delight”), a smoked aubergine puree topped with lamb. In all five of his permanently packed London restaurants, aubergines are roasted, misoglazed, stuffed with cheese or rolled into croquettes. And as seasoned gastro-watchers know, what occurs in Ottolenghi’s kitchens soon happens everywhere else. And if you haven’t smeared Chermoula paste all over one recently what on earth are you thinking?
British-Iranian chef Sabrina Ghayour, author of Persiana and