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Eggplant Fritters
Slice and peel eggplant, cover with boiling water, cook 15 minutes. Drain, mash, season with salt and pepper. Mix with 2 well beaten eggs, enough flour to make a thick batter, then drop by spoonfuls into hot fat and fry till brown. Drain on soft paper, serve hot.
A terse, workable fritter formula that assumes the cook knows how much flour is "enough." The two things to control are moisture in the eggplant and the temperature of the fat.
- Drain hardBoiled eggplant holds a great deal of water, and wet pulp makes a batter that spreads and steams instead of frying. Press the drained pulp in a sieve or twist it in a towel before mashing.
- How much flourFor one medium eggplant (about 1 lb) and 2 eggs, start with 1/2 cup flour and add more until the batter mounds on the spoon rather than running off it. A teaspoon of baking powder gives a lighter fritter, though the original does without.
- Fat temperatureThe original says only "hot fat" and does not say how deep it should be. If you deep fry, roughly 365-375F is the usual working range: cooler and the fritters absorb grease, hotter and they colour before the centre sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Size of fritterDrop rounded tablespoons and do not crowd the pan. Two to three minutes a side is usually enough since the eggplant is already cooked through.
- SeasoningBoiled eggplant is bland, so season the mash more aggressively than seems right. Grated onion, a little garlic, parsley or grated Parmesan all sit well in this batter.
- Draining"Soft paper" would have meant some soft, unglazed absorbent paper; paper towels or a wire rack over a sheet pan do the same job. A rack keeps the undersides crisp if the fritters must wait.
- YieldThe count depends on how much water you press out and how large you drop them; expect somewhere in the range of one and a half to two dozen, enough for four as a vegetable side.
Eggplant entered American cookbooks slowly, appearing first in Southern and Creole cooking before it became common further north; boiling and then frying it in batter was one of the standard treatments, alongside stuffing and simple slicing and frying. Fritters of this kind, where a cooked vegetable is bound with egg and flour and dropped into hot fat, were a general household technique applied to corn, parsnips, salsify and squash in turn, and they turned a single vegetable into a substantial dish. The instruction to peel may reflect a period habit, as older varieties are often said to have had tougher, more bitter skins than most eggplant sold now.