Every day during the summer, at 6:56 am and 8:43 am, Marion Sauveur gives you a recipe idea to brighten up your taste buds.

Today, the barbecued eggplant.

Vegetable typical of the Mediterranean diet with a beautiful dark purple color and white and soft flesh ... There are also white and purple.

Eggplant is native to India and has been growing in Europe since the 15th century, particularly in Italy.

In France, its culture developed particularly in the 18th century thanks to Louis XIV who ordered it to be planted in Versailles.

And it has a peculiarity: it is harvested and consumed before its full maturity ... otherwise its flesh is bitter!

The ideal is to choose a small eggplant: its skin is thinner and there are fewer seeds.

It should be very firm, swollen, with a smooth and shiny skin, neither too light nor too dark and with a beautiful green peduncle not dried out.

Above all, we don't eat it raw.

How do you offer us to cook it?

I could have offered you an eggplant caviar, it's so good for the aperitif by baking the flesh delicately in the oven with olive oil and herbs from Provence.

But I wanted to get out the barbecue!

We start by making a marinade.

We mix olive oil with minced garlic and a shallot.

Add a small diced tomato and Provence herbs.

We brush the eggplants that have previously been sliced ​​lengthwise with this mixture.

And all that's left is to cook them on the barbecue: five minutes on each side.

The eggplant must be very tender.

Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 4 eggplants 

  • 1 tomato

  • 2 cloves garlic

  • 1 shallot

  • 4 tablespoons of olive oil

  • 1 teaspoon of salt

  • 1 tablespoon of Provence herbs

  • 1 pinch of Espelette pepper

Preparation:

1.

We start by mixing the olive oil, salt, minced garlic and shallot, the diced tomato and the Provence herbs.

2.

Cut the eggplants into two-centimeter slices lengthwise.

We brush them with the mixture.

3.

When the barbecue is hot, cook the eggplant slices on the barbecue for five minutes on each side.

The eggplant must be very tender.

4.

This recipe can be prepared in the oven.

They will have to be cooked a little longer (30th of minutes). 

Like every morning, you ask a chef for a little tip

Today, we are talking to Edouard Beaufils from the restaurant Bec au Paradou, in the Bouches-du-Rhône. After making an eggplant caviar with the flesh, he suggests not throwing the skin away and making crisps. "Once we have scraped the flesh well and the skin is cleansed well, we put dry chickpeas or rice in the skins and we will dry them in the oven very slowly," he explains. "We will leave this for two or three hours until the skins become crisp. If we have a deep fryer, it's even better. We fry them for just a few moments, a little twenty seconds. an extremely crispy crisps with a very pronounced eggplant taste. " Perfect for changing from potato chips as an aperitif!

Edouard Beaufils, in his restaurant Bec, offers the eggplant as a starter in caviar: it is served with a bush of sheep like the brains of Lyon canuts, with pickled mustard seeds and marinated trout eggs to wake up the eggplant.

And you will also find this eggplant skin chips ... A balance of flavors and textures. 

A second address to taste the eggplant? 

We stay in the Bouches-du-Rhône.

We go to Nicolas Bottero's at Mas Bottero, in Saint-Cannat.

It offers an eggplant cannelloni with thin slices of pan-fried eggplant.

The cannelloni are stuffed with a spicy eggplant caviar.

A 100% eggplant starter and very tasty!