Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from Rhiannon Macfie Miller contains these words:



I had hoped that growing them ourselves and eating them fresh and young
direct from the greenhouse would negate the necessity for salting them
(not to remove excess water as such, but to remove the bitter compounds
dissolved in said water - some people are lucky enough not to be able to
taste them, but I'm not one of them). Unfortunately, judging by the
ones I harvested the other day, this does not seem to be true. Does
anyone else find that they can eat their aubergines without salting?

I used to salt shop-bought ones 20 years ago but gradually gave up
bothering when less and less came out; I have the impression that modern
varieties don't really need it like the old ones did. The tastiest ones
(imho) are the very small ones you can buy in Asian shops.

Janet

I find it depends on what I am cooking. If I am using them in a
ratatouille or other such type of "stewed" dish, I don't bother
salting.
But if I was making aubergines a l'espagnole (old Mammy food dish from
my childhood), or a moussaka, or any other gratin type dish, then they
are best salted. As someone else said, there is nothing worse than
watery aubergine.
It's interesting what you and a few other posters are suggesting about
the lower bitterness of new varieties. I had put the difference down
to "those nasty flavourless Dutch imports we get in supermarkets here",
as opposed to the locally grown aubergines I was lucky to find at my
local market, or those I was even more fortunate to get from my
father's cabbage patch back many moons ago on the old sod.

Cat(h)