Jane had me looking up aubergines after her comment, and I've learned some very interesting coffee-break sort of facts.
Firstly, aubergines are a fruit. (I think I should have known that - but it would make a good odd-one out-exercise).
Secondly they can be all sorts of pretty colours. Here you can buy seeds to grow lovely pale green ones in your own garden.
Apparantly early varieties of aubergine were smaller and white, a bit like eggs, hence 'eggplant'. I bet you didn't know that. I learned that here.
Anway Jane my advice is 1) be adventurous and 2)make some friends. We used to live by a huge african market and lots of shops here. They sold some wierd and wonderful things. Stand and look lost (and European) for long enough - about 5 seconds in my experience - and plenty of fellow shoppers would be only too glad to tell you what things are, give you cooking advice and recipes, tell you how much to buy, how long it will last etc etc. To be honest, it used to restore my faith in humanity apart from anything else.
Just remember to take a pencil and paper, and be prepared for linguistic misunderstandings. It took my red raw hands three days to feel even remotely normal after cooking with seemingly innocuous african peppers, and I'm sure someone did try to warn me...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Simple way to remember what is a fruit and what is not: fruits have seeds. Thus cucumbers, peppers and apples are all fruits.
Post a Comment