Majida Rashid
How can people say they don’t eat eggplant when God loves the color and the French love the name? I don’t understand.
– Jeff Smith,
American Cartoonist
Growing up, I didn’t like eggplants. That’s until I ate Middle Eastern eggplant dishes.
Commonly known as eggplant in America, only this vegetable has the honor of having more than one name in English. I first heard them called brinjals and then aubergines, which is so foreign to American English that Microsoft Word does not even recognize it if the computer language is set on American English.
My Internet search revealed that the vegetable originated in India and China. Interestingly there is no mention of the Middle East. Of course, it depends on who’s entering the information on the Internet.
In Pakistan, which used to be a part of present-day India, eggplants were cooked in a curry either with tons of spices or very little. Occasionally eggplant fritters called Pakorreh were served. Even my Indian friends could cook eggplant curry only.
Chinese steamed and stir-fried eggplants and Indian/Pakistani curries can never even compete with the variety of dishes cooked in the Middle East. Middle Eastern cooks do not rely on hot spices to turn eggplants into delicious food. Instead the vegetable is baked, fried, roasted, grilled, mixed in salads and filled with ground meat and rice for dolmas. Iranian Khorosh and Kashke badanjan, Mirza ghasemi; Arabian Baba ganouj, Muttabal, Mousaka; Turkish Karniyarik, Saksuka are but some of the dishes that opened my horizon and palate to eggplants. The main ingredient in the Turkish national dish called Imam bayildi or swooning Imam, is eggplant. No adapted vegetable can earn such a status. My suspicion is that some of the varieties are indigenous to the Middle East.
Like its cousins bell pepper and tomato, eggplant is a fruit and it belongs to the nightshade family. It comes in different shapes and sizes ranging from small round ones to long and thin and every size in between. Their skin can be shades of purple, white, green or a combination of these colors.
Eggplants are almost flavorless so they absorb flavors of other ingredients and add richness to the food they are cooked with. Though in some Middle Eastern countries eggplants are salted and left for half an hour in order to drain their juices, which are believed to be bitter.
My favorite Middle Eastern dish is the one in which four or five long eggplants are cut lengthwise into two pieces. The flesh is brushed with olive oil and lightly scored in a crisscross manner. Then it’s rubbed with crushed garlic and sprinkled with salt and sumac which adds tanginess. Next, they are baked for half an hour in the oven that has been preheated at 400°F. While some Turkish cooks top them with yogurt and pomegranate seeds, Lebanese spread a mixture of yogurt and tahini sauce on the top and sprinkle sumac over it just before serving.
As a child, I thought my mother talked to herself during our trips to the vegetable market of Abbottabad, Pakistan. Only now do I know that she was indirectly teaching me what to look for when buying eggplants. She would say, “This one doesn’t have smooth skin. Any wrinkle means the eggplant is dehydrated and it won’t taste good after it’s cooked.”
When it came to the green stem that makes an eggplant hang down from the branch, Mother looked for the greenest ones because, as she would say, “If the color is not green then it means it’s not fresh.”
Here is something for those cooks who like fried food.
Pakistani Pakorreh
Ingredients
1 small thick eggplant, thinly sliced
1/8 cup chickpea flour
1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon each of crushed cumin and coriander seeds
A dash of salt and crushed red pepper
1/8 cup water
Oil for frying
Directions
Mix together the dry ingredients.
Add water, a little at a time, and stir continuously with a fork. The paste should be thin but not runny. Tiny lumps in the flour will smooth out with mixing.
Dip eggplant slices in the mixture.
Fry in shallow hot oil until both sides turn golden brown.
Serve with tea and ketchup.
Serves 2.
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Foodie Majida Rashid lives in Texas. Food and cooking are her passion. Her philosophical writing can be read at apakistaniwomansjourney.wordpress.com. @Frontiers_Of_Flavor
