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Baked Eggplant
To bake, boil the whole eggplant in salted water for twenty minutes, halve it with a sharp knife, scoop out the centers; chop and mix this portion with bread crumbs, a little finely cut raw tomato, chopped parsley, onion juice and seasonings. Refill the shells with the mixture, cover with buttered crumbs and bake for half an hour in a hot oven.
A stuffed-eggplant recipe stripped to its bones, with no quantities and no pan size. The proportions are a matter of judgment, so build the filling by eye until it holds together without being pasty.
- Hot oven"A hot oven" is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat the buttered crumbs may color before the full half hour is up, since the flesh is already cooked through from boiling; go by the crumbs.
- Pierce before boilingA whole eggplant dropped into boiling water will trap steam and can split unpredictably. Prick it several times with a fork or paring knife first, and weight it with a plate so it stays submerged.
- Twenty minutes is for a large oneA big globe eggplant takes the full twenty minutes; a slender one is done in ten to twelve. It is ready when a skewer slides into the center without resistance. Overboiled flesh turns to water and the filling will not hold.
- Drain the shells and the fleshThe recipe skips this and it is the hinge. Turn the halved shells cut-side down on a rack and press the chopped flesh in a sieve; otherwise the crumbs collapse into mush and the shells sit in a puddle.
- Onion juiceAn old shortcut for onion flavor without visible pieces: grate half an onion and squeeze the pulp through cheesecloth, or press it in a garlic press. A teaspoon or two is enough. Finely minced onion, softened in butter, works as well.
- Crumb quantityFigure about a cup of soft fresh bread crumbs to the flesh of one medium eggplant, added gradually. The mixture should mound on a spoon, not pour.
- SeasoningsSalt and black pepper at minimum. The seasoning here is left plain, and it takes well to grated cheese, a little thyme, or a pinch of cayenne.
- YieldOne large eggplant, halved, gives two generous portions as a main or four as a side.
Eggplant is bulky and stretches a handful of crumbs and a tomato into something that eats like a main course. The stuffed-shell treatment, sometimes called eggplant farci, is a long-established way of cooking it in Europe and the Middle East, and appears in American cookbooks through the nineteenth century under headings such as "eggplant, baked" or "stuffed egg plant." Some earlier writers told cooks to salt the cut flesh and let it drain to draw out bitterness; that step is absent here, and boiling may accomplish something of the same thing. The recipe gives no measurement at all, leaving the proportions to a cook who knew what a filling should look like.