Four ways to cook eggplant: instruction

[Photo/The New York Times]

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For the last few summers, I've been in an eggplant rut. No matter how many times I stand over the pile of the multi-hued beauties at the farmers' market, swearing I'll try something new, I always fall back on my standby recipe: toss eggplant cubes with good olive oil and roast until they turn golden at the edges and meltingly soft inside.

In theory, they can be used innumerable ways: in salads, mashed into dips, tossed with pasta. But I usually end up nibbling them off the baking sheet as they cool. Dusted with sea salt, they are as compelling as popcorn with oily softness instead of crunch.

This year, to avoid roasting complacency, I did a little advance planning so I could reacquaint myself with other eggplant cooking techniques, like steaming, frying and grilling. Steaming was particularly suited to the thin-skinned, near-black Japanese eggplants that don't need peeling.

In the past I'd always used a steamer basket in a pot on the stove. But my mother swears by the microwave. So I tried it, wrapping the eggplant in parchment paper. It was quick and efficient and didn't heat up the kitchen. But steaming is very lean, and I think eggplant prefers to be rich. To compensate, I served it with a spicy peanut sauce spiked with lime and chile paste.

Frying was next. For this exercise I chose an eggplant Parmesan spinoff with fresher, more summery flavors. I skipped the breading and fried naked slices of eggplant, then served them with a garlicky cherry tomato sauce, dollops of milky ricotta and slivers of mozzarella. As a crunchy topping, I crisped up the bread crumbs I didn't use as a coating and sprinkled them on top. It was colorful, bright tasting and much lighter than the usual baked-and-melted affair.

The day I chose to grill the eggplant was one of those recent New York City scorchers, so I was delighted to keep the cooking outside. I grilled a whole fat purple globe eggplant until the skin blistered. Then I scraped the soft guts into a bowl and seasoned them with red wine vinegar, garlic, good olive oil and fresh herbs. A few capers on top added a pleasing brininess. I ate it for dinner with pita bread, a hunk of feta and glasses of rosé, and wanted for nothing.

I could have stopped my exploration there. But I missed roasting. This time, I vowed to make it into a meal. While the eggplant roasted, I threw together a lemony yogurt sauce and used half to marinate some lamb. To the rest, I added almonds, dates and cilantro, and slathered it over the roasted cubes. Then I broiled the lamb to char the surface and keep the meat juicy and rare.

There are lots of other eggplant cooking techniques I've yet to play with: deep-frying, broiling, sautéing, for example. Happily, there is still plenty of summer left.