It is a seasonal vegetable, which comes in many dishes ... But which frightens some, because of its bitterness. How to prevent an eggplant-based preparation from becoming bitter? This is the question asked by a listener of La Table des bons vivants to Laurent Mariotte and his columnists on Saturday.
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Remove the peduncle from the eggplant
"The bitterness comes mainly from the peduncle, and the little dust that settles on the eggplant", explains chef Yves Camdeborde first. "You need a lot of leaves on top of the eggplant so that it can really grow and take on a nice color and flavor," he explains. However, the leaves of eggplants, of the same family as those of tomatoes, are poisonous.
The chef's advice is therefore simple: "wash the eggplants well, remove the stalk, and after that don't forget one thing: wash your hands well, because bitterness is deposited on the hands and is transmitted very easily."
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Chop the vegetables for a caviar
Another point of vigilance: do not let the oil in which you cook the eggplants, which can also be a source of bitterness, heat up too much. And one last tip, signed by Laurent Mariotte: when preparing eggplant caviar, it is better to chop them than to mix them so as not to crush the seeds, which also give a bitter taste.