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Justinv said:
Eggplant is supposed to be white. Its why its called eggplant.
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Eggplant / aubergine as a color is not a shade of white but a shade between purple and violet because of the color of the vegetable.
Here in the tacuinum sanitatis dating back the 14th century :
Photo-2-Vienna-2644-folio-31v-2.jpg
 
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sumis said:
It’s supposed to be called aubergine.

.
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The original eggplant grows wild in India. It has been eaten for more than 10,000 years. Baingan, aubergine, brinjal are all cognate from the original Sanskrit word. The original eggplants were greenish/brown. Eggplant is what we call it in America because the cultivars that first became well used here were white and egg shaped. But the vegetable had dozens of names having criss-crossed the globe now for millennia. And it can now be found in many shapes, colors, and sizes.
 
stringer said:
The original eggplant grows wild in India. It has been eaten for more than 10,000 years. Baingan, aubergine, brinjal are all cognate from the original Sanskrit word. The original eggplants were greenish/brown. Eggplant is what we call it in America because the cultivars that first became well used here were white and egg shaped. But the vegetable had dozens of names having criss-crossed the globe now for millennia. And it can now be found in many shapes, colors, and sizes.
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Eggplant being associated with purple didn't happen until a few centuries ago.
 
A lot of vegetables have been messed with a lot long before GMO was a thing. Carrots supposedly werenn't really orange until Duth growers supposedly started breeding them in that direction. Sweet bell peppers all derive from a randomly mutated hot one that wasn't hot. Mushrooms were all brown until some albino ones happened to pop up at random and they started breeding with those.
In that sense after millenia of plant breeding / selection there's really almost nothing natural about most of our fruits and vegetables.
 
stringer said:
The original eggplant grows wild in India. It has been eaten for more than 10,000 years. Baingan, aubergine, brinjal are all cognate from the original Sanskrit word. The original eggplants were greenish/brown. Eggplant is what we call it in America because the cultivars that first became well used here were white and egg shaped. But the vegetable had dozens of names having criss-crossed the globe now for millennia. And it can now be found in many shapes, colors, and sizes.
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brinjal it is.

.
 
The heaviest aubergine (Solanum melongena) weighed 3.362 kg (7 lb 6.6 oz) and was grown by Peter Glazebrook (UK) for entry in the CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championships, held at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern, Worcestershire, UK, on 22 September 2022.

0A4B0717-E50B-47EC-B97F-A5D2BCF65F6F.png
Peter Glazebrook is from Halam in Nottinghamshire, and is one of the most accomplished growers of giant vegetables. He is currently in possession of Guinness World Records certificates for the heaviest cauliflower (27.48 kg) and potato (4.98 kg), and previous records have included heaviest carrot, onion and parsnip, and longest carrot, parsnip, beetroot and cucumber. The weight was confirmed by head judge Martyn Davis of the UK National Vegetable Society.
 
As crazy as it sounds, most popular food crops can be traced back to one guy, David Fairchild, who worked for the US government in ~1900 and his job was to travel the world and bring back interesting plants to grow to advance American agriculture. He brought back over 100,000 plants. The list is stunning. There is a good book about it, The Food Explorer. Travel was by ship at that time and slow and world travel was filled with crazy adventure stories. Agriculture in the 1800s was sad, you could count the number of American cash crops on your fingers (or thereabouts). Corn, potatoes, etc.

Anyway, he introduced varieties of avocados, pomegranates, kale, broccoli, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, asparagus, parsley, cucumber, cabbage, radishes, mango, peach, pistachios, cashews, grapes, meyer lemons, soybeans, pima cotton, rice, nectarines, dates, hops, and even brought flowering cherries to Washington DC.

Interesting story, for example wandering remote areas in italy to track down rumored seedless grapes that found their way to california to create the eating grape and raisin industry. American hops sucked at the time so he stole prized varieties from germany so America could make decent beer. He tracked down prized long grain cotton in egypt to grow in the US.

He searched for crops that could grow in varied climates like swampy gulf coast, tropical florida, etc.

Its a really interesting story. I had never heard of him.
 
Justinv said:
As crazy as it sounds, most popular food crops can be traced back to one guy, David Fairchild, who worked for the US government in ~1900 and his job was to travel the world and bring back interesting plants to grow to advance American agriculture. He brought back over 100,000 plants. The list is stunning. There is a good book about it, The Food Explorer. Travel was by ship at that time and slow and world travel was filled with crazy adventure stories. Agriculture in the 1800s was sad, you could count the number of American cash crops on your fingers (or thereabouts). Corn, potatoes, etc.

Anyway, he introduced varieties of avocados, pomegranates, kale, broccoli, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, asparagus, parsley, cucumber, cabbage, radishes, mango, peach, pistachios, cashews, grapes, meyer lemons, soybeans, pima cotton, rice, nectarines, dates, hops, and even brought flowering cherries to Washington DC.

Interesting story, for example wandering remote areas in italy to track down rumored seedless grapes that found their way to california to create the eating grape and raisin industry. American hops sucked at the time so he stole prized varieties from germany so America could make decent beer. He tracked down prized long grain cotton in egypt to grow in the US.

He searched for crops that could grow in varied climates like swampy gulf coast, tropical florida, etc.

Its a really interesting story. I had never heard of him.
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Sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation!
 
Alright already! Alright...

Since I found myself using it a lot this past week, I modify my prior statement. Salad spinners aren't a waste of space. I just wish they didn't take up so much space. :)

Maybe I was just trying to convince myself that I didn't need it and could put something else in its place.

Machi gaps still suck though!


;)
 
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Jovidah said:
A lot of vegetables have been messed with a lot long before GMO was a thing. Carrots supposedly werenn't really orange until Duth growers supposedly started breeding them in that direction. Sweet bell peppers all derive from a randomly mutated hot one that wasn't hot. Mushrooms were all brown until some albino ones happened to pop up at random and they started breeding with those.
In that sense after millenia of plant breeding / selection there's really almost nothing natural about most of our fruits and vegetables.
Click to expand...
The version I heard after the carrots spread around the world, there are tons of different colors of them, from purple and black variations more popular in Asia to white and orange in Europe, Dutch grow the orange variation the most and they brought them around with trading and colonization, the orange cultivation is also more productive so they replaced alot of local variations.
 
blokey said:
On a related note, Medieval watermelon and the evolution of corns, we did a number on these plants.
View attachment 221799View attachment 221800
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Tf… you get 4 spoonfuls out of every watermelon? And I thought watermelon in our day was a waste of money..

The corn picture is incredible. The first one looks like a random plant in the wild. Ok maybe I wouldn’t like things THAT old school.
 
Anyone tried the dry fried eggplant dish at Szechuan places? I fail every time I try to recreate at home.
 
wcothran said:
Anyone tried the dry fried eggplant dish at Szechuan places? I fail every time I try to recreate at home.
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I'm not sure exactly which dish you mean. Is fried eggplant then stewed in casserole with garlic and dark soy and other things? I have made variations on that, with success. One thing I do know is that the art of dry frying is rarely practiced any more, no one has the time, and it can be tricky. So it basically means "deep fried" now, and that's much easier to replicate. Just make sure the eggplant has fried to full tenderness, and always use only Chinese/Japanese eggplant, for which there are no substitutes.
 
Yep, it's probably the eggplant variety. Seems like it comes out crispy but quickly loses that crispiness. I've tried cornstarch, etc. with the same results. Anyway, here's a link to a picture of the dish: imgres
 
wcothran said:
Yep, it's probably the eggplant variety. Seems like it comes out crispy but quickly loses that crispiness. I've tried cornstarch, etc. with the same results. Anyway, here's a link to a picture of the dish: imgres
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Ah, OK, that's a little different than what I was thinking. Their menu describes it as "battered and fried," which is certainly different from lightly dusted with cornstarch and fried.

If you have been using Western eggplants, you may be able to make them work by salting them, letting them sit, then squeezing out all the water you can. The symptom you describe certainly sounds as though too much moisture was left in the eggplant.
 
Justinv said:
As crazy as it sounds, most popular food crops can be traced back to one guy, David Fairchild, who worked for the US government in ~1900 and his job was to travel the world and bring back interesting plants to grow to advance American agriculture. He brought back over 100,000 plants. The list is stunning. There is a good book about it, The Food Explorer. Travel was by ship at that time and slow and world travel was filled with crazy adventure stories. Agriculture in the 1800s was sad, you could count the number of American cash crops on your fingers (or thereabouts). Corn, potatoes, etc.

Anyway, he introduced varieties of avocados, pomegranates, kale, broccoli, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, asparagus, parsley, cucumber, cabbage, radishes, mango, peach, pistachios, cashews, grapes, meyer lemons, soybeans, pima cotton, rice, nectarines, dates, hops, and even brought flowering cherries to Washington DC.

Interesting story, for example wandering remote areas in italy to track down rumored seedless grapes that found their way to california to create the eating grape and raisin industry. American hops sucked at the time so he stole prized varieties from germany so America could make decent beer. He tracked down prized long grain cotton in egypt to grow in the US.

He searched for crops that could grow in varied climates like swampy gulf coast, tropical florida, etc.

Its a really interesting story. I had never heard of him.
Click to expand...
Very interesting, thanks. I will add that while not edible, the largest cash crop in America for a long time was tobacco, and indigo was up there too. Tobacco: The Most Versatile Cash Crop
 
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spaceconvoy said:
I have never met a stereotypical 'annoying vegan,' but I've met so many obnoxiously smug carnivores. This thread is reinforcing that perception
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I've a disdain for unyielding extremists on both ends of the dietary spectrum—overbearing carnivores and anti-meat cooks/eaters, who love picking fights, proselytizing their preferred diet.

I love cooking/eating meat—but have friends, and dated people who're vegans, vegetarians, macrobiotics, kosher, halal—married a vegetarian, occasional pescatarian. It's just food.

Perhaps one of my biggest disappointments are the many lazy, uncreative pro chefs that treat the vegetarian option on their restaurant menu with obvious indifference—i.e. mushroom risotto, baked penne, kale salad, portobello steak, etc. Or servers unaware of what vegetarian even means—truly tired of having to educate waters/waitresses whenever dining with non-meat eaters.

I love to eat and cook—just don't feel the need to convince anyone that it's my way or the highway.
 
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