Here’s a little post for those of you who plan to ferment eggplants this season or in the future. As described in Monday’s post, prepping eggplants for fermentation does produce a fair amount of food scraps. Yr little munakins urges you to use those scraps, don’t toss ‘em! This is meant to be a quick, rustic dish – it’s based on a recipe in a wonderful cookbook called Our Syria: Recipes from Home for zucchini scraps fried with garlic and mint.

The recipe is very simple. Julienne the eggplant scraps and skins, place in a skillet with a little olive oil, cover the pan, and sauté until the eggplant starts to sweat. Remove the lid, add a crushed garlic clove, some salt, a splash of water, and continue frying until the eggplant starts to caramelize. Make the dish very Middle Eastern by adding a little dried mint and a squeeze of lemon to finish. Replacing the mint with basil turns the flavor towards Italy; replacing the olive oil with sesame seed oil, omitting the mint and lemon, and finishing with soy sauce turns it towards Japan. A scattering of green onion slivers is a great topper no matter what seasonings you use. Serve over rice or on toast, as your pantry dictates, and yum, yum, yummy: these eggplant “rags” taste mighty fine. Try ‘em and judge fer yrself! Until next time, my pets, and very fondly, me.