No eggplant love

Naked eggplant

Isn't an eggplant beautiful? I love that aubergine color -- and the word aubergine -- and the smooth skin. At my house, the diners would prefer to look at one rather than eat one. It is only acceptable in a dish that disguises the eggplant, like a good baba ghanoush. I should have predicted the reactions to tonight's dish, which was inspired by a homework assignment from the cooking science class that I've been taking.

It's pretty, isn't it? I had to make substitutions in the recipe, as I didn't have lemon thyme on hand. I do have plenty of za'atar, so this was a most fragrant eggplant when it came out of the oven.

It got prettier with the addition of garlicky buttermilk sauce and the appealing pop of color from the pomegranate seed garnish. A sprinkling of sumac completed the dish.

Dressed eggplant

The problem arose upon serving. The flesh was grayish green, no matter how I looked at it. My solution was to drown it in more sauce.

The girls couldn't stomach it. "I like the pomegranates," Taryn said, generously. Kathy glared at her plate. I know exactly what she's going to look like as a teenager -- she is an eight year old goth, with black lipstick and a great scowl. The only thing throwing off the picture is her missing top tooth. Zed pronounced the eggplant slimy, then made samosas from Trader Joes so the girls would actually eat something.

Braised in Salsa

At least one food critic thinks that "put an egg on it" is a food trend that is so last year. I will be stuck in the food trend past, then, as I continue to slide a fried egg on top of just about any dish. My favorite is a fried egg on a slice of pizza.

Braised egg image from Eating Well

I also see that I've been using the wrong term for my new favorite egg-prep method. This recipe from Eating Well describes my "poached in salsa" as braised eggs. In any case, this makes the best egg ever.

Back to food trends, is molecular gastronomy over too? I don't get out for fine dining experiences that often, but I'd like to try something like these olives. In fact, I purchased the sodium alginate and calcium lactate gluconate so I can experiment at home.

Make that we can experiment at home. My chemist/cook, Taryn, is helping me out with the online class I am taking from edX. It is called Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science. The course is full of math, physics, chemistry, and food. I signed up for it on a whim, but the material has captured me: I want to do my homework!

One of the first assignments was to calibrate my oven, which I now know runs about 35 degrees hot on convection. I always had to set the temperature lower when using the oven's fan. I didn't know by how much, and I burned a lot of cookies. The candy that resulted from doing the calibration test was yummy, too. (See it in the image below? The caramelized splat.)

Sugar melted at "330" degrees F in my oven. The melting point of sugar is 366 degrees F.

Up next, a recipe for eggplant, examining the recipe for Nestle's Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies, and (this makes me happy) "perfect eggs."