So last summer was a scorcher and went on for months. On the back of that I decided its time to start planting aubergines at our place. This summer began with weeks and weeks of cold winds and colder nights, right into mid to late January. To protect these poor little plants I upended the plastic fridge produce drawers we collect from the dump to grow seedlings in during the winter and propped them on bamboo sticks over the poor little wind battered plants. Then the worst bird attack EVER began on my garden. Several cucumbers and zucchini were uprooted by something – it looked like a couple of pigs had been rooting through. I’m still not sure whether it was blackbirds, weka or quail, all of which I spotted in there. I think it was a new boysenberry which attracted them when it started to fruit. So a net went on the aubergines under the fridge drawers and miraculously an actual aubergine was born beneath all this paraphenalia. And it grew and grew and grew and this weekend I picked it. It wasn’t very big, but I made the heavenly Aubergine with garlic and anchovies from Ottelenghi’s Simple, and cooked it on the barbie to go with a big whole snapper Nina was given and some of our first zucchinis we collected between us. See here for how I prepared the aubergine on the bbq, and here for how to bbq succulent minty zuchinni