Recipes: Stuffed, chargrilled or roasted as part of a ratatouille, aubergines are a favourite summer vegetable

Aubergines are so summery a vegetable, and so widely useful, yet they can be revolting – and too often their unappealing state comes when they have been cooked in liquid.

This is usually in the form of a poorly made ratatouille, where the cook has chucked the chopped aubergines, courgettes and onions into a pan with tinned tomatoes and their juice. Aubergines should be fried, or better still, roasted. While roasting, they absorb just a fraction of the olive oil in which they cook, whereas frying them, you find you are always topping up the olive oil in the pan. And aubergines can be marinated in olive oil with herbs, then chargrilled.

Aubergines are so summery a vegetable, and so widely useful, yet they can be revolting – and too often their unappealing state comes when they have been cooked in liquid. This is usually in the form of a poorly made ratatouille, where the cook has chucked the chopped aubergines, courgettes and onions into a pan with tinned tomatoes and their juice. Aubergines should be fried, or better still, roasted. While roasting, they absorb just a fraction of the olive oil in which they cook, whereas frying them, you find you are always topping up the olive oil in the pan. And aubergines can be marinated in olive oil with herbs, then chargrilled.

Aubergines come in two distinct but delicious varieties; longer and thinner, and slightly drier of flesh, and fatter and rounder, with slightly more succulent flesh. I stuff the fatter ones. Aubergines make wonderful first or main courses, or accompanying vegetable dishes.

When preparing aubergines I always used to salt the chunks or slices and leave for half an hour. Tiny drops of brown clear liquid appear on the surface of their flesh, to be mopped off with kitchen paper. But these days I don’t usually bother, and the aubergines taste no less delicious.