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Baked Egg-Plant
Remove the stalk but not the skin, wash, cut into halves, put on in boiling water and boil till partly tender (about one-half hour), drain, cut into small pieces, and season with salt, pepper, and plenty of butter. Place in baking-dish with thick layer of bread crumbs and more butter. Bake till brown in a quick oven and serve in the same dish.
A straightforward gratin of parboiled eggplant under buttered crumbs. The only real decision is how far to take the initial boil.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The eggplant has only been boiled to "partly tender," so the oven both finishes it and browns the crumb layer; expect 15-20 minutes or a little more.
- Half an hour is too longA halved eggplant in boiling water is tender in 10-15 minutes, and "partly tender" is all you want here. Boiled to collapse it turns to grey water-logged pulp when you cut it up.
- Drain hardEggplant holds an enormous amount of water. Press the cut halves in a colander, or lay them on a towel, before dicing; otherwise the crumb layer steams instead of browning.
- Skin onThe recipe explicitly leaves the skin on; keeping it likely helps the halves hold together in the water. Modern eggplants have thin enough skin to eat, but on a large older specimen the pieces of peel can be picked out after chopping.
- Plenty of butterTake this generously: figure 3-4 tablespoons worked into the flesh and another 2 dotted over or tossed through the crumbs. Eggplant absorbs fat readily and tastes flat without it.
- CrumbsDry, coarse crumbs from stale bread, not fine packaged crumbs, which pack down and go pasty. Toss them with the melted butter before spreading so they brown evenly.
- No salting stepOlder recipes often called for salting eggplant to draw out bitterness. Cultivated varieties sold now are not notably bitter, and the boiling here would rinse away any salt anyway.
- YieldOne large eggplant, about 1 1/4 lb, serves three or four as a side dish in a shallow 8-inch baking dish.