Eggplant

Most people know that an eggplant has nothing in common with an egg except for sharing its ovoid shape.  Beyond that, confusion reigns supreme.  For example, many think of  eggplant as a vegetable (if not THE go-to substitute for vegetarians, in lasagna and so forth), when (much like its relative, the tomato) it is, in fact, a fruit that tends to get used as a vegetable in cooking. 

To add to the confusion, eggplant goes by several different names. The terms “aubergine,” “melongene,” and “brinjal” are all interchangeable with “eggplant,” which is excellent news if you're at the grocery store, frustrated by your inability to locate the aubergines.

You may very well be doing that if you're gathering ingredients for ratatouille, which you may very well be doing if you've just shown the movie Ratatouille to your child for the umpteenth time, and he suddenly demands that you make like Remy the rat and whip up a batch of that weird-looking stuff for dinner.  The good news is that once you get past that whole aubergine/eggplant puzzle, ratatouille is fairly easy to make.  Or at least it can be easy.  There are, of course, as many ways to make it as there are chefs in the world, but if you want to keep things simple, try the "featured recipe" over at ratatouillerecipe.org, which basically involves cutting up some tomato, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, green pepper, garlic cloves, parsley, and the aforementioned eggplant, sautéing some of them,  layering the rest on top of them in a casserole dish with some salt and parmesan cheese, and baking it.

Actually, that just made us rather hungry.  Think we'll go pick up some aubergines and give that recipe a shot.