Eggplant gets comfy makeover

If you don’t know what to do with eggplant but admire its dark and gleaming good looks, consider this dish from the cookbook Now and Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers (Chronicle Books/Raincoast, $50) by Julia Turshen.

Paired with a tossed green salad, it would make a relaxed meal. “I am all about what goes with what,” Turshen writes in the book, which offers more than 150 recipes and 20 suggested menus.

The veteran food writer’s original plan was to write an entire book about leftovers. She finds them handy for making a new meal: “You’re already halfway there!”

Realizing people regularly asked what they should serve with her recipes, she turned to producing a seasonal cookbook featuring foods that complement each other, and added pages of ideas for enjoying leftovers.

For example: mashed cauliflower makes a soup that can be topped with fried croutons; leftover cooked rice can be mixed with feta cheese and chopped herbs, and used to stuff bell peppers.

In this comfort-food recipe, Turshen livens up eggplant by stir-frying it in cubes, browning ground pork and seasoning with ginger and soy sauce. She suggests using ground turkey or chicken as an alternative to pork.