Summer of feasts: tortang talong, agrodolce, imam baldi

What is a blog when updated annually then neglected for months at a stretch? Is it a blog? Or is it a love-letter that attests to a faithful relationship with the queen of vegetables? I have now been writing (sporadically) about my love of eggplants for over a decade. Food bloggers come and go, their recipes cluttered with ads. Scroll for ten minutes to find the cook time of a soft boiled egg. Satisfy your ASMR as TikTok influencers chop and mash in a harried montage. 

No! That is no honest, everlasting love of eggplants. The Aubergenius shares her failures as well as her successes, her stews that turn to mush when tinkering with a new instant pot, her grainy and dimly lit photos, her terrible Indian food before she learned to make real Indian food. It's all here, buried in odd glitchy fonts in the archives of this ancient blog. A record of true love. 

Behold! The humble aubergine
Its violet hue with velvet sheen
A creature from the sea, its skin
Like seals or eels, a fleshy kin:
For like the sea, it sweats in salt
Exudes its oils to a fault
(Its oiliness is not a vice
When mushy innards sing with spice)
Its lobes of seeds like sturgeon roe
Its toothy fins, its gut below
A belly waiting to be slit
To let out steam, and scramble it
Until it looks like heaven's paste
For not a drop should go to waste.


This year marks a turning point for the Aubergenius. Last year I poured my little heart into a very heartfelt essay on community gardens. This year, my garden has yielded pounds upon pounds of the most delicious eggplants I've ever had. Texture: creamy, buttery, fatty even without fats, so thick and dense you can spread it like a brie. Flavor: sweet, earthy, assertively eggplanty, not remotely bitter nor sour. 

First harvest. Yes, that eggplant is half the size of a human head.

Traviata plant is several feet tall and falling over with fruit.

Folks, I am getting spoiled. My regular meals are so flavorful that I can never go back to floppy grocery fare.

Homemade pita with tapenade, pesto, and roasted heaven-on-earth.

Just a regular Tuesday.

For myself, I just roast and eat. But when cooking with friends, the eggplants get more special. I give you: THREE SUMMER EGGPLANT DISHES 

#1
Tortang Talong — Filipino eggplant omelet

with rice, Jufran (banana ketchup!), and mango salad

Ingredients
A few small eggplants
Enough scrambled egg for coating (2-3 eggs + a little salt)
A bowl of flour
Oil, salt, pepper

Method
Bake eggplants on high heat in the oven until soft and blackened. Peel off the skin, leaving the top on, and mash flat. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the eggplant. Dip in the flour and then the egg, then fry. You may wish to pour more egg on each side if the egg doesn't want to stick. Serve on rice with banana ketchup. 

Side salad: sliced mango, cucumber, sweet peppers, cilantro, dressing made from rice vinegar and sesame oil

#2
Imam baldi 

with tahdig, green beans, za'atar labneh... and other feasty foods

I've written about imam baldi before. If you have small, flavorful eggplants and your tomatoes are starting to ripen, I know of nothing that better showcases the quality of those ingredients. The key is a long, slow cook at a relatively low oven temp. 

Ingredients
Eggplants
Onion
Garlic
Tomatoes
Mild thin-skinned green peppers
Lots of olive oil
Salt, sugar to taste
Optional: parsley, pine nuts

Onion-tomato ratio should be around equal or perhaps just slightly more tomatoes. But the sauce can be pretty oniony.

Method
Salt eggplants, sweat 'em, wipe off the salt and sweat, coat in olive oil and roast face-up in 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Roast the peppers in the pan with the eggplants. While roasting, make a simple stovetop tomato sauce out of the other ingredients. Add salt and a pinch of sugar to taste. Pine nuts and parsley are optional. When the eggplants are soft, remove from the oven. Save the peppers in a separate bowl so they don't burn. Scramble around the middles of the eggplants with a fork and pile the tomato sauce on top. Put back and roast at a low temp, 350 at the highest, for a good long time until the tomato sauce that was once sloshing in the bottom of the pan has become a kind of jam. Top with roasted peppers.

guys guys LOOK HOW MANY I grew

For loyal readers: yes, Kaspar is elderly but still alive and kickin'

Hard to explain just how good these are but I think you can see the flavor radiating in waves

Eat with whatever you like. My menu mixed Turkish with Persian so it included my FIRST TAHDIG (!)—that is, Persian rice with a crunchy crust—and side dishes like green beans and labneh covered in za'atar. Friends brought homemade pita, salads, figs, crème brûlée... it was a meal to remember.

With dill, saffron, and black eyed peas

quintessential "no this is not a polished food blog" pic

#3 

Grilled eggplants with agrodolce sauce — Sicilian sweet 'n' sour

I didn't end up with good photos here because we were grilling after dark. Whether you grill, roast, or fry, you can coat your eggplants in agrodolce, a puckering strong sauce that's oniony, vinegary, with capers and raisins and pine nuts... it sounds weird until you try it. Please do.

I followed this recipe for the sauce. Turned out great.

Master griller Lydia

Some we grilled with oil, others we coated in flour, egg, and panko

a dark, oily nighttime pic taken just before agrodolce was smeared on all this, which serves no function but to affirm that eating happened

In closing: revel in your summer bounty, for when the winter months come, the eggplant grows bitter and pocked, and the summer bounty do not freezeth well, and naught but faint memories remain.