The chef gave advice on the selection and preservation of eggplant

Eggplant loves fire, and in order to achieve a particularly bright taste from it, the vegetable should be strongly fried. Better yet, hold it over an open flame. This is exactly what is usually done in the process of cooking such popular dishes as babaganush or hatzilim, Ilya Romanov, the concept chef of the Voronezh restaurant project Just Fmly, told Izvestia's Food Without Borders gastronomic project.

"Most often, eggplants are preserved in the form of caviar, here their main task is to give a special texture and density, or, in other words, to create the "body" of the dish. In this case, the blue ones will definitely need to be fried properly, only then will you preserve the unique handwriting of the blue ones. Garlic is usually used as a spice for caviar, but as an experiment, you can also try adding curry. The taste of such a preparation will not be very familiar, but rich and bright," said the cook.

The peculiarity of the taste of eggplant is its slight bitterness. A small amount of bitterness may even be desirable from a culinary point of view, as it enriches the taste of the dish. However, excessive bitterness will have to be eliminated. So it's better to choose those vegetables that you don't have to do any additional manipulations with later. Modern hybrid varieties (labeled F1) have almost no bitterness. White and variegated eggplants (for example, the "Matrosik" variety) also usually do not taste bitter.

"Choose medium-sized young fruits with shiny, supple skin without wrinkles. It also does not hurt to inspect the pulp of the product. To do this, cut the eggplant and leave for a couple of minutes. If the flesh quickly darkens or turns green, the fruit may taste bitter. For reliability, you can even taste a small piece of raw eggplant. If you do come across bitter eggplants, then they can be soaked in salt water, and you also need to completely peel them from their seeds and skins and cut off the stalks," Romanov recommended.

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A rather interesting preparation option is eggplant in tomato sauce, which vaguely resemble the Italian dish parmigiano, only as a cold appetizer and, of course, without cheese. Fried eggplant rings are simply heated in tomato sauce and then rolled into jars, advises our interlocutor.

You can read more tips from chefs and exclusive recipes on the Izvestia Zen channel "Food Without Borders".