Aubergine

While its sitting in some olive oil and roasting in the oven, I thought I would take a moment to pay a little homage to eggplant. I learned through some wikipedia research that the plant is native to India where it is called "brinjal" and the European name "aubergine" is derived from this Sanskrit origin. From India is was propagated throughout south and east Asia, and then the Middle East, making a major impact in the cuisines of all these regions. In the West, it started being called "eggplant" the 18th century when someone came up with some white cultivars that look, quite literally, like large eggs hanging off a plant. I still remember my epiphany, working on an organic farm in southern Maryland, looking out on rows of white eggplant, when suddenly it all made sense.

There is a very limited variety of eggplant available in a conventional grocery setting that belies the tremendous diversity of the vegetable. There is a much broader range of shap

e, size, and color grown on smaller scale farms and gardens in North America, but even more so in the various regions of Asia where it is popular: pink, purple, white yellow, stout, long, thin, fat. I'm growing a basic home depot variety, along with a few Ping Tung plants.

The Ping Tung has been so good to me. I spent so much of the summer anticipating the first fruits of the plants. It took a while for them to fully mature, but when the little baby eggplant pods started to appear, I can't tell you how excited I was. The shape and color are so good! Ping Tung eggplant are long and slender, with a different sort of purple shade to them, and this white accenting at the top. I have seen pictures where it appears almost pink. They can grow to be quite long, I read up to 18 inches, but I haven't left any of mine on the plant past 10 or 11. Ping Tung, named after the village in Taiwan where they are from, also particularly high yielding, and disease resistant so they make a solid addition in practical terms, aside from their novel appearance.

(BTW: The seed, and pretty much all the seed I use, comes from http://www.southernexposure.com/, from the good people at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange/Acorn)