I really like eggplant... in the abstract. But I almost never buy grocery store purple eggplant. Why? It's difficult to store, it's difficult to work with, it can have a lot of seeds, and it's one of those ingredients for whom the proper prep techniques are all over the place, depending on who you talk to. Do you peel it? Do you salt it? Is it worth the hassle?

Japanese eggplant solves all these problems. It's long and narrow, so the seed factor is minimized. It doesn't need salting and draining. You can retain some of the peel. And you can chop it and chunk it and use it like you would other vegetables.

Half-peeling a Japanese eggplant is easy if you have a halfway decent vegetable peeler. Cut the ends off the eggplant, then take the peeler and peel a one inch strip down the length of the eggplant. Rotate the eggplant and start a second one-inch strip so that there's an inch of intact peel between the first and second strip. Then peel a third strip the same way. Eyeball slightly smaller strips for smaller eggplants, but what you're looking for is three stripes of intact peel around the eggplant. This lets you keep some peel for nutrition, flavor, and texture, without ending up with big tough pieces.

They work well in stirfries and curries, and absorb up a lot of flavor. Plus, they look like giant purple wangs.