Yesterday’s look ahead to the coming month on the blog presented the usual long list of whisky reviews and invitation to nominate those you’d particularly like to see reviewed. Here now is the poll to select the four recipes for September. There are six recipes on the poll and you can vote for up to four of them. The top four vote getters will show up on the remaining four Thursdays of the month. In the past—when I did a version of this poll on Twitter and also the last couple of times on the blog—I’ve used the ranking to sequence the posts. But this month I might juggle that depending on the selection. And oh, there’s a twist this month: all the recipes feature eggplant/brinjal. We have been drowning in eggplant from my plot in a local community garden and as a result I’ve been cooking it in all kinds of ways of late.

Indeed, the candidates in the poll run the gamut from traditional to not-so traditional:

1. Baingan Bharta: A more-or-less traditional version of the North Indian classic with some minor twists of my own.
2. Pasta alla Bharta: A fusiony dish that adds some Indian twists to the classic Sicilian Pasta Alla Norma.
3. Lamb Shanks Curry with Eggplant: A rich slow-cooked lamb curry whose gravy is given a textural and flavour boost by eggplant that melts into it as it cooks.
4. Podi Potta Kathirikai: A very traditional Tamil recipe from my friend Aparna which may currently be my favourite way of eating eggplant.
5. Sweet and Spicy Eggplant Pickle: An improvized pickle that I came up with to use up the funky Rossa Di Rotonda eggplants I grew this year.
6. Oven-Roasted Spiced Eggplant: A mod’ish approach to roasting long eggplant smeared with a spice paste.

Have at it: vote for up to four candidates. I will keep the poll open for a day or two.

And if you want to take a look at the finished dishes and some of the eggplant madness from my garden, launch the slideshow.