Hofy-
Thanks for posting this. We also live in Wisconsin, and grow eggplant, but usually make it "old school fried" just because we haven't found a good recipe for grilling it. This looks great! We'll have to try it.
(Also had to look up what a "crash hot" was. Those look good as well!)
I never ate eggplant for the basically the same reason.......I had no idea how to cook it other than frying it. That changed a couple of weeks ago when my wife brought a huge one home from a roadside farm stand (hard to pass up 2 huge eggplants for a $1). I did a little research about what to do with it and found an absolute winner. I slice it into thick slices (3/4"-1" thick), trim off the skin, liberally coat both sides with EVOO (the pieces will soak up a LOT), and then sprinkle both sides Kosher salt. It doesn't talk much salt, and is easy to over do it. Then I grill them over direct med-high heat for 5 minutes per side. That should leave them with nice dark grill marks on both sides. At that point, they just melt in your mouth. If you bit into it and still get any spongyness, then they are undercooked. You should be able to slice them with the side of a fork and almost no effort. We have eaten them 5-6 times like this in the past 2 weeks. I've oversalted them twice. They were still edible, but the salt was overpowering. I want to try experimenting with a few other spices from here.