Working Girl Cooks!

The concept of salting an eggplant was totally foreign to me until recently. I have been cooking eggplant forever, since I was a wee little teenager, cooking in my mom's kitchen. I never salted it though and it always turned out ok to me. But recently I've noticed that the eggplant tastes a little bitter, I like to think that my palate has been refined since I was a teenager. Anyway, one day, while I was secretly perusing Foodgawker.com at work (shhhhh don't tell anyone!), as I often find myself doing (That site is so addicting!) I found this post by always order desert. She has a beautiful description of eggplants and how to properly salt them. Apparently you only really need to salt an eggplant if it large and ripe with brown seeds. These seeds are what produce the bitter acidic juices.

I decided to make my absolute favorite eggplant dish, the one I have been making since I was 13. Simple, flavorful sliced eggplant with seasoning, broiled to perfection! So I sliced the eggplant into 1/4" slices.

I placed all the slices onto a baking pan.

And added a very generous amount of salt.

One hour later, My eggplant was covered in little dewy drops. This is the acidic juices that were pulled out of the eggplants flesh by the salt.

I rinsed off the juices and the salt by running each slice under cold water.

Gave each slice a squeeze to remove all traces of liquid, and placed them on a paper towel.

I covered them with another paper towel and pressed down to dry them completely. The eggplants are ready to be seasoned and placed in the broiler.

I coated the pan with a generous helping of extra virgin olive oil.

Placed the eggplant slices on the baking pan and covered them with a generous helping of olive oil.

Then I added a generous helping of my favorite, absolute all-time favorite seasoning....

McCormick Montreal Chicken. This stuff makes everything taste good! I know it's not gourmet or anything but it's yummy and super easy!

Broil the slices in the oven for about 10 minutes until they are soft and juicy. Then enjoy! They are good all by themselves or in a sandwich with some basil and goat cheese!