Quick, name the first three eggplant recipes that come to your mind. Go on! I’ll give you a minute.

OK? Let’s compare lists:

Baba ghanoush, I bet you got that one! That’s the smoky-sweet Middle Eastern dip made with roasted eggplants and tahini. Excellent barbecue side dish.

And eggplant parmesan, another good one even though it tends to be on our no-no list these waist-watching days. It’s a rich and gooey casserole made with slices of deep-fried eggplant layered with sweet tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella.

What other recipes did you think of? Maybe ratatouille? Possibly Greek moussaka? For such a sexy vegetable (yes, sexy! Just take one look at those glossy curves and tell me otherwise!), there seems to be a surprising lack of ideas about what to do with these purple globes. At least until we step outside of the box–or recipe–and start getting creative!

Pick eggplants that are very firm, feel heavy for their size, and have very taut skin. Older eggplants tend to get bitter, so try to buy them as fresh as possible and then use them within a few days. Also, smaller eggplants are usually sweeter than those huge hulking ones and have fewer seeds to deal with.

Once you get them home, there are a few ways we can go about preparing them. I love to roast whole eggplants until the skin is crispy and the insides are creamy. You can do this on the grill, in a 400° oven, or even in a dry skillet on the stove top. Just keep turning the eggplant until the skin is completely blistered and the vegetable starts to look collapsed. When it’s cool enough to handle, I split the eggplant and scoop out the insides for baba ghanoush, soups, pasta sauces, and even quick stir fries.

Alternatively, you can cut eggplant into thick slices or cubes. Salt them first to draw out some of the bitterness and season them throughout, and then rinse off the pieces before cooking. Thick slices can be roasted on the grill or under the broiler, while cubes can be sautéed in olive oil or stewed in a tomato sauce.

No matter what, the key to creamy, delicious eggplant is giving it time to cook. This might take longer than you expect! Taste a piece of eggplant every so often or poke it with a skewer–it should be completely soft with no sponginess or resistance. If the eggplant seems like it’s burning before you think it’s done, turn down the heat a smidge or add a little water to the pan to help it steam.

When it comes to flavorings and recipes, we can take some inspiration from world cuisines. Eggplant can be found in almost all of them, from Indian curries and Italian pastas to Chinese stir fries and Middle Eastern braises!

In what recipes do you love using eggplant?
(Images: Emma Christensen, top, and Martha Stewart)

Emma Christensen quit her office gig when the cooking obsession started taking over and got herself enrolled in culinary school. She is now a full-time freelance food writer with a mild obsession for making complicated and finicky recipes (Exhibit A: homemade croissants). Working from a small apartment kitchen, she dreams of one day having an actual pantry and a garden bigger than her windowsill. More of Emma’s writing can be found on Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn, the Chicago Tribune, and the Columbus Dispatch.

So it has been with this newfangled idea they’re calling Meatless Monday. I’ve mostly ignored the background babble. Meatless Monday is a concept initiated by The Monday Campaigns in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

When I first heard about Meatless Monday it sounded to me a bit like Backwards Friday, an annual event we had in grade school when all the kids wore their clothes backwards. It was something you do once for the novelty of it–it wasn’t something anyone would make a lifestyle out of.

I have to admit that I didn’t initially investigate the concept or read up on the why and how of Meatless Monday, but it didn’t sound like something I’d try, much less permanently implement (even though I am generally quite content forgoing meat). But in the burgeoning movement to reduce one’s carbon footprint, and toward greater long-term health, my interest was slowly piqued by this one-day-a-week vegetarianism thing. After all, I do love a good eggplant parm. How hard could it be?

I’m particularly interested in a fresh start on Monday after gorging all weekend. The cheeseburger right off the grill at Saturday’s barbecue melted in my mouth (washed down by a bottle of beer), but following it with two pieces of The Pioneer Woman’s chocolate sheet cake was just unnecessary (but worth every bite!).

Monday is a new beginning. Monday speaks to me in tongues of crispy vegetables and protein sources low in saturated fat.

In his bestselling books, Michael Pollan has endorsed quasi-vegetarianism, and others are taking note. Giving up one-seventh of meat consumption (the equivalent of one day per week) is practicable, Pollan says, and I agree. I can do this.

So I mentioned it to my husband this weekend. “Honey, will you do Meatless Mondays with me?” I expected him to laugh and reply with a sarcastic, “Yeah, right.” But in a surprising moment of marital support, and without asking why, he said, “Sure. Starting tomorrow? Pasta Mondays.” I told him tomorrow we could indeed start with pasta–a win-win (easy for me to cook, even easier for him to like). But in my secret scheming, I plan to slowly intervene in this carb-lover’s lifestyle–after all, replacing a hearty protein with an empty carb is not helping anyone. Next week we’ll try a tofu or bean dish.

We’re aiming to try this for the long haul–for ourselves and for our planet. Meatless meals can be less expensive and easy to prepare. I’m all for that as a bonus. Are you on the bandwagon? Share with us.

Sarah Fullerton, content marketing & editing. Armed with a masters in journalism from Northwestern, a passion for all things cooking, and a perpetual oven mitt, Sarah loves nothing more than to camp out in the kitchen with a new recipe, interpret it creatively (a dash of this, a dash of that), and then surprise her husband and daughter, her friends, and herself with the results. She can be contacted at sarah [at] plummelo [dot] com.

Today I overcame one of my longtime cooking fears. I’m sure many of you can relate — I tend to shy away from (read: avoid like the plague) recipes with more than, say, 10 ingredients.

But I adore a good eggplant parmesan so much, and I needed to have it so much, that in the end I was willing to do what it takes to accomplish the homemade flavor. I had saved Bobby Flay’s recipe to my Plummelo weeks ago, but kept staring at it with intimidated eyes. No, not this week. Too many ingredients. But at a certain point, you just need to have the eggplant parm. I reached that point.

My husband had done the grocery shopping this past weekend. Somewhat surprisingly, he returned with two lovely eggplants (he tends to bring home about 90 percent of what is on the list). The pretty purple guys stared at me from their lofty shelf in the fridge for a few days. Too many ingredients…

But today was their day.

Let me digress. I live in the North End, a quaint neighborhood that is Boston’s Little Italy. It is a place where people still shop (and vendors still sell) for their ingredients separately… the meat from the butcher, the vegetables from another guy, the cheese and cold cuts from the salumeria. To me, there is so much joy and old-fashionedness in procuring my ingredients from the specialty sellers. They know their stuff, and they have the highest quality ingredients. Quite often, they are also at competitive prices. But today I spent $30 on cheese. Fontina, two types of mozzarella, and parmesan. As the cheesemonger was serving up my portions, he inquired as to their ultimate destination, “What are you going to make?” “Eggplant parmigiana,” I said. “How many are you cooking for?” And I sheepishly replied, “Two.”

I spent $30 on cheese? And so it goes.

With my 20 or so ingredients on hand, I began. It required a good deal more attention and stamina than my standard five ingredient recipes, but none of it was as difficult as I had feared. It was a journey, and I aimed to enjoy the whole process. There was dicing, slicing, boiling, dredging, whisking, stirring, layering, and baking.

And then there was eating. (We called over some friends to share in the eating.)

My conclusion? It was worth the investment of time, and I tasted each one of my 20 ingredients.

Do you have any cooking fears you want to overcome? Share them with us.

All photos by Sarah Fullerton