Hi Everyone,
There is a new twist to my love-hate relationship with the nightshade species that is also known as eggplant, aubergine, baigan, bolanger, brinjal, garden egg, and more popularly as melongene, in Trinidad and Tobago. If you’ve been reading me for a while you will know that the only way I can eat eggplant is when it is fire-roasted. Therefore, when I was introduced to fire-roasted Melongene Jam, while on a recent trip to Trinidad, I just had to try it.
There are so many things one can do with eggplant – fry, sauté, stuff, bake, curry, stew, grill, pickle and roast. But have you ever considered turning this fruit-vegetable into a jam? Kern Rocke did when he completed his undergrad degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, in 2013. Each student doing one of the cores for the programme, in this case, Development of Caribbean Cuisine, had to create a novelty food item featuring a local or regional ingredient. For his novelty item, Kern used eggplant to make a condiment, Melongene jam, a runaway hit.
How did he do it?
KERN: During my childhood, my mother would occasionally prepare curry for my family which included curried beef, chicken, pumpkin, channa (chickpeas), potato and tomato choka, all to be eaten with roti (paratha or dhal puri). I distinctly remember that on one occasion, she made roasted melongene choka. To this day I am still obsessively in love with that