This week, because we literally had our hands full with eggplant, the challenge to creatively utilize this purple bounty continues. We walked away from the farm with not only a sizable Rosa Bianca, but also a few Long Purples (depicted above) and a Casper, which is a small, white eggplant with a very sweet flavor. None of the recipes in the weekly CSA newsletter called for such a massive amount of eggplant in one dish. And since eggplant loses its texture and firmness with each passing day, we needed to use them all up quickly.

Our saving grace was a French dish called ratatouille, originally a poor farmer’s solution to excess summer produce. Ironically, the original recipe didn’t include eggplant, but today, ratatouille is almost unrecognizable without it . Zucchini, tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, onions, and garlic were used to make the first manifestations of this dish, and luckily for us, we had all these ingredients in stock as well.

There are a variety of ways to make ratatouille but all agree on one thing: the ingredients are cooked in stages, then combined and left to stew. Slow cooking allows the flavors to interact, and the final product makes a unique contribution to any dinner table (as well as fantastic leftovers!).

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