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Stuffed Eggplant, Marseillaise
Cut three small eggplants into halves lengthwise, make a few criscross incisions in the meat of the plants without cutting the shells, then plunge in boiling fat, cut side downward, and fry for ten minutes. Lift up and lay on a towel, skin side up, let drain for five minutes, scoop out all the meat and finely chop. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a saucepan, add a small chopped onion and fry for three minutes, then add the eggplant, with two seeded, peeled, red, fresh, chopped tomatoes. Season with a light teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, add a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and half bean finely chopped garlic. Mix well with wooden spoon and let cook for fifteen minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile, then add four tablespoons fresh bread crumbs, mix well, and with this preparation fill up the six half shells. Place on a tin, sprinkle a little bread crumbs over, arrange a few little bits of butter on top, set in oven to bake for fifteen minutes, remove, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A Provençal stuffed eggplant that gets its character from an unusual first step: the halves are deep-fried face down before being hollowed out. Keep that step and the filling tastes of eggplant rather than water.
- The hinge: fry, then drain hardPlunging the cut faces into hot fat both cooks the flesh and drives off moisture, which may be why the finished filling holds together with only four tablespoons of crumbs. Drain skin side up for the full five minutes or the shells sit in oil.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is usually reckoned a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper for three small eggplants. That is aggressive by modern taste; start with half and adjust.
- "Half bean" of garlic"Bean" here is generally taken to mean a clove, or a bean-sized piece, so half a clove, finely chopped. A whole clove will not spoil it.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Use 400F for the final fifteen minutes, which is enough to brown the crumbs on already-cooked filling.
- TomatoesTwo fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded, means roughly a cup of pulp. Out of season, drained canned tomatoes give a better result than pale fresh ones; cook the mixture until it is thick and no longer weeping before adding crumbs.
- Bread crumbsFresh crumbs, not dried packaged ones, torn from a day-old loaf. Dried crumbs absorb far more liquid and will make the filling pasty.
- "Plunge in boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase simply means fat hot enough to fry. A deep skillet with an inch or two of oil is enough if you turn the halves once.
- YieldSix halves, serving three as a light main course or six as a first course or side. Good warm rather than piping hot.
Anything labelled marseillaise in a turn-of-the-century professional kitchen pointed to the cooking of Provence, and eggplant was among the vegetables long familiar in the Marseille markets, where it arrived from the Mediterranean south long before it was common in northern French or American cooking. Stuffed eggplant halves of this type are still made along the coast under names like aubergines farcies, sometimes with a little leftover meat worked into the filling; this version is meatless. Note that the recipe assumes a deep kettle of frying fat standing ready, which was ordinary equipment in a period kitchen and tells you as much about the era as the ingredients do.