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Fried Eggplant with Parmesan Cheese
Peel the eggplant, cut it into quarters lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and cut it into convenient lengths. Rub a stewpan over with garlic, put in a large lump of butter, and melt it; then put in the pieces of eggplant, season to taste with salt, pepper, and a small quantity of grated nutmeg, and toss them about over the fire. Before the eggplant is quite done put in plenty of grated Parmesan cheese, and add more butter if necessary. When quite tender turn the eggplant onto a hot dish, with the cheese over it, garnish with sippets of hot buttered toast, and serve.
Despite the title, nothing here is deep-fried: the eggplant is sauteed in butter in a covered stewpan until it collapses, then bound with Parmesan. The hinge is heat control — the cheese goes in near the end, over gentle heat, or it seizes into strings and scorches on the pan bottom.
- Stewpan, not skilletA stewpan is a broad, straight-sided pan, usually supplied with a lid. Use a heavy-bottomed pan or small Dutch oven; note that the recipe has you toss the pieces about over the fire rather than cover them, so keep the heat moderate enough that they soften rather than searing dry.
- Scooping the seedsModern supermarket eggplant is bred with small, soft seeds and rarely needs this. With a large late-season globe eggplant the seedy core is still worth cutting away; bitterness is traditionally blamed on the seeds, though that is more kitchen lore than settled fact.
- SaltingThe recipe seasons in the pan. If your eggplant is old or very large, salting the pieces for 30 minutes and blotting them dry first will draw off bitter juices and reduce how much butter they drink.
- "A large lump of butter"Read that as 3 to 4 tablespoons for a single medium eggplant, with more added later as the flesh absorbs it. Eggplant is famously thirsty; expect to add a tablespoon or two more.
- Rubbing with garlicA cut clove wiped around the warm pan leaves a faint perfume only. For a more definite garlic flavor, add a crushed clove with the butter and remove it before the cheese goes in.
- Nutmeg"A small quantity" means a few scrapes of a whole nutmeg — perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon. Pre-ground nutmeg is much flatter and stale nutmeg tastes of dust.
- The cheeseTake the pan off high heat before adding the Parmesan, and use a coarse grate of real Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano. Roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup for one eggplant, stirred in gently so it melts into the butter.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried or toasted in butter, arranged around the edge of the dish. Sourdough or any firm white bread works.
- YieldOne medium eggplant serves two as a vegetable course or four as a side. It does not hold well — the cheese stiffens as it cools, so serve straight from the pan onto a warmed dish.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book — he was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel rather than a cook — is often taken as a record of what a large American hotel kitchen was serving, and its vegetable chapter leans heavily on French and Italian practice at a time when eggplant was still an unfamiliar item on most American tables. The dish itself looks like an Italian treatment: eggplant stewed soft in fat and finished with grated cheese, a pattern generally associated with southern Italian home cooking and, in baked form, with melanzane alla parmigiana. The garnish of sippets is usually seen as the English side of the Waldorf's inheritance; small pieces of buttered or fried toast set around a soft dish were common in Victorian service, and they do useful work here, giving something crisp against flesh that has cooked down almost to a puree.