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Eggplant, En Julienne
Peel and cut into julienne strips a small, sound eggplant. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; lightly roll in flour, then place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for three minutes. Remove, drain well and serve.
A straightforward deep-fry, and the only difficulty is that eggplant absorbs oil greedily unless the fat is genuinely hot. Everything here turns on temperature and on cutting the strips fine enough to cook through in the stated three minutes.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase is period shorthand for fat at frying heat, shimmering and just short of smoking. The recipe names no temperature; around 375F suits modern practice, and fat much cooler than that will let the eggplant soak up oil and turn greasy rather than crisp.
- Julienne sizeThe recipe gives no dimension; julienne conventionally means fine matchsticks, on the order of 1/8 inch square and a couple of inches long. Anything much thicker will still be raw at the centre when the coating has browned.
- Salt timingThe recipe salts before flouring, which draws out moisture and makes the flour clump. Either salt and rest the strips 20 minutes, then blot them thoroughly dry before flouring, or flour first and salt the moment they come out of the fat.
- Frying basketA wire basket lowered into a deep kettle of fat was a common arrangement in kitchens of this era. A deep saucepan filled no more than a third and a spider or slotted spoon does the same job; the basket mainly lets you lift the whole batch at once before it overcooks.
- Fry in batchesA small eggplant is more than a single basketful. Crowding drops the fat temperature sharply and is the usual cause of limp, oily results.
- White pepperLikely chosen so no dark flecks show against the pale coating, a common reason for preferring it in light-coloured dishes. Black pepper will do, though it looks different and tastes rather less musty.
- YieldOne small eggplant gives a garnish or side for two to four. Serve immediately; fried eggplant softens within a few minutes of leaving the fat.
Cutting a vegetable en julienne is French kitchen vocabulary of long standing; the term is often said to have described thin strips of vegetable cut for a clear soup of the same name, though its origin and dating are not settled. In ordinary use it simply meant matchsticks. Eggplant reached European and American tables largely through Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking, and in English-speaking kitchens it was still treated as a slightly exotic vegetable, most often fried, stuffed or scalloped rather than roasted. The frying basket and the brief, high-heat immersion are marks of professional hotel and restaurant practice.