Paul van Reyk
The Aristologist: vol 14: p 9- 35. Napier, New Zealand. 2023
Recently my culinary curiosity has been circling around the story of the eggplant in Australia. The fat, glossy purple Solanum melongena was a staple of my Sri Lankan childhood and has been a regular in my cooking across a range of cuisines – Sri Lankan, Indian, Greek, Italian, Lebanese, and French. My father grew them in the early 1960s in our backyard from seeds smuggled in from Sri Lanka in the suitcases of relatives and friends. An Italian father of a high school friend grew them in his backyard too. To the extent I thought about it at all I supposed it was through migrants like my relatives and the Italian father that the eggplant got its spot in the gardens and on the tables of Australia.
