Oh--eggplant! One of my favorite plants to have in the garden. I love the velvety leaves, the little purple flowers, watching the eggplant fruit grow into lucious, deep purple fruits...Eggplant is much aligned in North America. I use eggplant cubes in place of mushrooms in tomato sauces, I deep-fry it like you'd deep fry zucchini fingers, I make eggplant cavier, I slice it thin, bread it with egg-milk-seasoned bread crumbs and "bake it" at 400 for 15 minutes, flip it, bake another 10 minutes and use it in moussaka or eggplant paramesean (rather than frying it) (slice them really thin, and they are yummy chips--and these chips freeze well). I toss cubes of it into chili...I peel it, cube it, blanche it, and freeze it...can you tell I like eggplant?
And no, eggplant doesn't, by itself, have a lot of flavor. It acts like a sponge and absorbs the garlic, etc. in the sauces, marinades, etc. My DH, who is not an eggplant fan, has decided he does like eggplant parmesean and moussaka. And, the "eggplant" fingers or chips don't hang around very long if he's in the kitchen.
Thanks to this thread, I have more ideas of what to do with eggplant. Which, btw, is a very prolific plant in my garden..that reminds me, I'll have to start the seeds soon....time to dust off the "grow stand" and set everything up...the plants take a little longer than pepper plants to reach the size I want them to be when it is time to plant them...this year, I'm adding white eggplant and the striped ones (purple and white) to the garden. Hopefully this year's seeds will germinate, I have only been successful with Black Beauty in the past. 20 years of growing eggplant and still love it.