Aubergine: Eggplant by Another Name

Aubergine, or eggplant by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

If soft, luxurious silk were a food, it would be eggplant. Maybe not just eggplant, but aubergine. American English can be harsh to the ear; I like the way the Brits use the French aubergine, it even sounds silky. Like silk, the regal eggplant, which is botanically classified as a fruit, is classic in many cuisines: The French have ratatouille, the Italians have Parmigiana, the Greeks have moussaka.

Of course, I can't think of eggplants without remembering the charming writer Laurie Colwin, who wrote an essay entitled "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" nearly 25 years ago. In "Home Cooking," her collection of essays, many of which appeared first in Gourmet magazine, in between "The Low-Tech Person's Batterie de Cuisine"and "How to Fry Chicken," she extols the versatility of eggplant and how she cooked it in her Greenwich Village apartment "approximately the size of the Columbia Encyclopedia." She did this without a kitchen, just a two-burner hot plate.


"When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally. I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold. It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations. If any was left over, I ate it cold the next day on bread."

She goes on to write "I ate eggplant constantly: with garlic and honey, eggplant with spaghetti, eggplant with fried onions and Chinese plum sauce." (Hmmm, eggplant with garlic and honey...)

Just a few years after I first discovered her books, Colwin passed away suddenly at 48 years old. She was known primarily as a novelist during her lifetime, but her food writing has endured, with "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking" remaining in print nearly 25 years later. Colwin's homey style lives on in the current trend of food blogging - read Colwin, then Molly Wizenberg on "Orangette" and you see that the apple fell off the tree and kept rolling. Although I majored in journalism and wrote all kinds of stories, it was when I read Colwin that I said to myself "this is what I want to write." Marcel Proust relived his past as he contemplated a madeleine; I read about Colwin's eggplant and imagined my future as a food writer.

Back to eggplant: it's a little early in Georgia for the Asian varieties to make it to my supermarket, but the globe variety is plentiful, with the characteristic burnished patina. The Asian eggplants are smaller and have fewer seeds, thus not requiring the salt "degorging" treatment to release the bitterness.

I use the smaller Asian eggplants in late summer to make redneck ratatouille when the overripe homegrown tomatoes threaten to spill their juices all over the kitchen windowsill. Eggplant, peppers and other tasty items from the crisper drawer round up to yield their goodness to the pot. This early in the season, without a tomato worthy enough of the ratatouille ritual, I turn to other preparations, this time to the tried and true Southern Eggplant Souffle. This recipe takes advantage of eggplant's texture, subtle taste and adaptability.

Forgive me while I tell a brief story about my initial encounter with eggplant souffle. When I was a young woman with a promising future, I worked for six months for a hot-shot p.r. firm in Buckhead, the tony business district in North Atlanta. Actually, it was on the outskirts at the time, in an area called Brookhaven and it was right next door to a Mary Mac’s to Go where sweaty ladies in white aprons and hairnets scooped Southern classics into styrofoam boxes. The food was divine. As I pointed out my selections, I came to an unfamiliar casserole. “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to the yellow, quivering mass. "Why that’s eggplant souffle," the cafeteria lady replied. It didn't look like eggplant, at least not what I was used to - gray or fried. I’d never heard of it, but it had to be ok, because everything in this building was good. I remember a lunch of eggplant souffle, turkey and dressing, and corn. At the conference room table, I opened my clamshell to reveal all yellow food. And it was delicious.

To this day, I can close my eyes and see down the hallway of B/H/Y Public Relations towards my boss' office. The hallway was lined with sliding glass doors, and every now and then, if the planets aligned properly, someone would ping off a closed door, like a bird trying to attack his reflection. And if I I put my mind to it, I can smell the chicken frying next door at Mary Mac's.

Eggplant Souffle by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Southern Eggplant Souffle

Imagine my joy upon finding Mary Mac's eggplant souffle recipe online. This is my adaptation and you'll notice that the recipe is more of a custard than a traditional French souffle. Here in JAW-ja, seemingly everything is a souffle, pronounced SOO-flay.

1 medium eggplant, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes
2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 slice white sandwich bread
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon grated onion
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350°. In a medium saucepan, bring to a boil water and salt.

2. Add eggplant, bring to a simmer and let cook, covered, for 10 minutes. Drain eggplant and mash, yielding about 1 1/2 cups pulp.

3. In a medium bowl, tear bread into small pieces and soak in milk. Add eggs, onion, melted butter, salt and pepper. Add eggplant, mixing well, and pour into 1-quart buttered baking dish.

4. Bake at 350° for 35 to 45 minutes, or until "set" in the middle. Serve warm.
adapted from Serenbe Style and Soul with Marie Nygren.

Aubergine, or eggplant by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I've written before that my world is small, but my kitchen is big. By that, I mean that I know I'm not particularly well-traveled or well-educated, but I can explore new worlds and learn new techniques in my kitchen. If there's anything I learned from Laurie Colwin's essays, it's that there's magic in the everyday foods that we prepare for our families and that sharing food and recipes builds bonds of friendship.

After making the souffle, I had three additional eggplants and decided that the world of aubergines deserved more exploration. Enter Cookstalk Classic and Evelyn/Athens. This is a message board that I began participating in about three years ago. Most of the members started at Fine Cooking's Cookstalk board and migrated to Delphi forums. This is a generous group of cooks willing to share their lives and their knowledge - there is a staggering amount of expertise between the professional and home cooks. I could name a few friends and many impressive cooks that I've met through Cookstalk, and I will someday soon, but today I want to mention Evelyn/Athens, a former Canadian now living in Greece. I've never met Evelyn face to face, but this much I know: she is a devoted mother and a first-class cook. She posts her recipes on Recipezaar and they are inspiring and reliable.

A search of Evelyn's eggplant recipes revealed 17 different preparations. I chose Hunkar Begendi, which translated to "Turkish Eggplant Cream," and essentially, it's an eggplant souffle, down to the thick, buttery roux and cheese. Greek cheeses other than Feta are hard to come by in my corner of Georgia, so I subbed Parmesan, with Evelyn's blessing.



Hunkar Begendi, or Sultan's Delight by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



Hunkar Begendi (Turkish Eggplant Cream)

This is Evelyn's headnote for the recipe: "This literally translates as 'the Sultan's Delight', and it is that! The first time I had it, I fell in love. Mild, rich, buttery - it perfectly complemented the braised beef (in tomato sauce) that it was meant to accompany. This is a very subtle dish. If you want FLAVOUR, look elsewhere. This is flavourful in a more refined way, and also a lesson to our overly-spiced palates." I agree.

3 medium eggplants
Juice of one half lemon
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup to 1 cup hot milk, as needed
Grated fresh nutmeg
Grated fresh Parmesan cheese (1/4 to 1/2 cup)
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Wash eggplants and using a paring knife, prick the skin all over each vegetable. Place on baking sheet and let roast for up to one hour. The eggplants will look like giant shriveled raisins when ready. Remove from oven and let cool.

2. When vegetables are cool enough to handle, peel off the skin, remove the seeds and chop up the remaining
pulp and place in a saucepan.

3. Add lemon juice to eggplant mixture and simmer until very soft, stirring often, about 10 minutes. Remove from pan.

4. In saucepan, melt butter, add flour to it and stir to make a roux. Add eggplant and stir to combine. Slowly add hot milk until mixture resembles mashed potatoes. Season with freshly grated nutmeg, salt and pepper.

5. Correct seasoning, adding more lemon juice and nutmeg, if desired, then stir in Parmesan cheese. (Kasseri and Kefolateri are Evelyn's Greek cheese recommendations.) Serve warm with additional Parmesan.

Text and images © 2010, Lucy Mercer.

The quotes are from "Home Cooking" by Laurie Colwin, published 1988 by Knopf. Buy it. Read it. Often.

"Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" is also the title of a food writing collection edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. It's a delightful book that includes Colwin's story and another by her daughter, Rosa Jurjevics. Published 2007 by Riverhead.

Goodbye Gourmet, and Ruth Reichl, Don't Forget to Write

The November issue, the final issue, of Gourmet is on newsstands now. I picked it up today to read at lunch, over a ham sandwich and Coke Zero at the bookstore. The Thanksgiving issue has always been the star of the Gourmet lineup, and editor Ruth Reichl has said in the past that as long as she's at the helm, a roasty-toasty turkey will be on the cover of the November mag. I guess then it's fitting that this Rockwellian turkey, bosomy and burnished, is on the cover of the last Gourmet magazine.

It's been a couple weeks since Conde Nast announced it will pull the plug on Gourmet and the issues already in the can will not see the light of print. Some media observers say the final issue marks a sad day for foodies. I say it's a sad day for all who love a perfectly written declarative sentence, the kind that my quirky journalism professor with the geek glasses (long before they were considered coolly ironic), reading aloud a student's work would proclaim "it sings!" With evocative photography and spot-on recipes, Gourmet was a hat trick of words, pictures and food. Words, pictures and food better and distinct from its competitors. Not the brain candy of Paula Deen (bless her butter-basted heart) and some other successfully merchandised chefs/cooks I could name. Not the effervescent entertaining how-to's of Gourmet's kid sister, Bon Appetit. Not the precise execution of Cook's Illustrated, with its clipped narrative describing recipe evolution from disaster to culinary dynamite. Not the idiosyncratic appeal of Fine Cooking, itself newly renovated, hardly a venue for stirring prose, and until recently, not much of one for photographs and design, either.

Gourmet and I go back two decades, when as a newlywed, I decided that the magazine would teach me how to cook. I recently came across a couple issues from those days, and was astounded at the advertising and page count - December 1987 tops out at 278 pages. (I bet the ad staff's Christmas party was a blast that year.) Inside, the much-missed regular feature, Gastronomie Sans Argent, and Laurie Colwin's charming "How to Make Gingerbread." Colwin was one of those writers with a knack for pulling you into her world and making you feel like a cherished friend, one who would serve a cup of Darjeeling alongside a plate of fresh-baked gingerbread, and scribble the recipe on the back of a receipt, apologize for not having recipe cards, and press it into your hand as you left. Colwin departed this world too soon, in 1992, but her books on food are still in print 20 years later. The Gourmet columns are collected in two volumes, "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking," and just like Proust, deserve to be pulled from the shelves and re-read every couple of years.

Now to Reichl, a writer I first discovered through an advance copy of her memoir "Tender at the Bone," a fine entry into the "memoir with recipes" genre along the lines of Colwin. Reichl has a similar gift for sharing her life's story through the food that she eats and cooks and it was starting to look like she would always helm Gourmet. Under her leadership, Gourmet brought in even more fine writers, and broadened the scope of its mission to include the politics of food, for example, publishing a story on migrant workers in the tomato fields of Florida; and farm to table issues. For a time, the letters column had a bit of the rant and rave feel to it. I remember a particular letter writer commenting on an issue dedicated to Latin American cuisines stating that they didn't care to get their politics from Gourmet magazine. I say to any party, Democrat, Republican or Flying Purple People Eater, if there's food, set a place for me at that table, that's my kind of politics.

TV viewers watch Food Network for their favorite chefs. Gourmet's readers thumbed the table of contents to find their favorite writers: Calvin Trillin, Ann Patchett, John T. Edge; and at Gourmet.com, scholarly Doc Willoughby, relatable new mom Lesley Porcelli, the enigmatic Francis Lam, (who we'll probably find out one day is Pynchon or Salinger or Harper Lee or some other reclusive novelist who desperately needs an outlet to write about food). Two issues of the past few years stand out: a slim but satisfying edition of food writing featuring the best from its quiver of authors, and the January 2008 tribute to Edna Lewis, the late doyenne of Southern cooks and writers (that issue also included a tribute to the town of my birth, Nashville, Tennessee, composed by novelist and hometown girl Ann Patchett.)

Two decades of Gourmet, and the one word that comes to mind is transcendent, that's my Gourmet experience. Sure, it's wrapped up in its own name-brand world, of Gucci and Baccarat and Rolex, Sotheby's and Chanel. That's not my planet and likely never will be. And maybe that was the problem all along, because magazines, no matter how excellent the editorial product, if they don't have advertisers, they've got bupkis. I've often wondered who the target audience of Gourmet really was, because the advertising, except for the promotions with Goya beans and M&M candies, is geared way out of my price range. It seems unlikely that the Louis Vuitton-wearers of the world would break a sweat over the origins of the tomatoes on their carefully composed salads.

I've always felt a little like the red-headed stepchild relating to this magazine. But I can't deny that the editorial product spoke to my soul. Maybe someday I'll eat a thin-crust apple tart in a bistro in whichever arrondissement one must tour, but for now, I'm content to make that scrumptious tart in my very own kitchen, thanks to the guiding hand of Gourmet.

So, Merci, Gourmet, for 68 years of good food and good living. And here's hoping that an influential someone, somewhere, realizes that Ruth Reichl was on to something important, essential, and life-giving and gives her another shot at culinary magazine greatness. Until then, I'll thumb through the Thanksgiving issue and be thankful for what we all had.

Something to Chew On

As I physically and mentally prepare for the meal of the year, I find comfort in Laurie Colwin's words.

"Although turkey is delicious in itself, it is burdened with context as the say in the literary criticism racket. A turkey without seasonal angst is like a baseball game without the national anthem, a winter without snow, a birthday party without candles. For better and worse, the exhaustion, the exhilaration, the expectations, and the complications are a kind of emotional condiment, the secret element that gives turkey its essential spirit."

from More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin