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Eggplant Oriental
2 green peppers 2 eggplants 3 tablespoons cooking oil 6 ripe tomatoes 3 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon paprika Remove the seeds from the peppers, and cut the peppers into small pieces. Pare the eggplants and cut into small pieces. Cook the eggplant and peppers in the fat until slightly brown, then add the tomatoes and seasonings and continue the cooking until the eggplant is done. Serve very hot.
A plain stewed vegetable dish that depends almost entirely on how you handle the eggplant in the pan. The quantities are generous — this feeds six to eight as a side.
- The hinge: don't crowd the panEggplant browns only in a wide pan over fairly brisk heat; piled deep it steams and turns grey and slack. Use a 12-inch skillet, or brown the eggplant in two batches and return it all to the pan before the tomatoes go in.
- Three tablespoons of oil is leanCut eggplant absorbs fat quickly, and two whole eggplants will drink far more than three tablespoons before they colour. Expect to add oil as you go, or salt the diced eggplant for 20 minutes and blot it dry first, which reduces how much it soaks up.
- "Cooking oil" and "the fat"In an American cookbook of this period this would most likely have meant a neutral vegetable oil or shortening. Olive oil suits the dish, though the recipe gives no indication of it.
- Peeling the eggplant"Pare" means remove the skin entirely. Modern eggplants have thinner, less bitter skins, so peeling is optional — leaving it on helps the pieces hold their shape in the stew.
- Ripe tomatoesSix ripe tomatoes is roughly 2 lb. Peel them (30 seconds in boiling water, then cold) and chop, or substitute a 28-oz can of whole tomatoes, drained and broken up, out of season.
- SaltThree teaspoons for this volume is on the high side by current taste, especially if you have salted the eggplant beforehand. Start with one and adjust at the end.
- How longFigure 10 to 15 minutes to brown the vegetables and another 20 to 30 minutes after the tomatoes go in, uncovered, until the eggplant collapses and the liquid has cooked down to a thick sauce. Watery is the usual failure.
- ServingGood hot as directed alongside lamb or roast chicken, but it also keeps well and improves overnight; served cool with bread it becomes a first course.
This is a household-magazine version of the dish that circulates around the Mediterranean under many names — ratatouille in Provence, caponata in Sicily, the various türlü and ajapsandali stews further east — all built on eggplant, peppers and tomatoes cooked down in oil. "Oriental" was at the time a loose label, applied to dishes associated with the eastern Mediterranean and beyond rather than to any specific cuisine.