Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (147 page)

3)
Baking—about 30 minutes at 375 degrees

About 30 minutes before serving, place broccoli in upper-third level of preheated oven and bake until bubbling hot and cheese has browned nicely on top. Do not overcook, or broccoli will lose its attractive flavor and texture. You may keep the dish warm for 15 minutes or so in turned-off oven or warming oven, but the sooner you serve it the better the flavor.

TIMBALES DE BROCOLI

[Broccoli Molds]

These are deep-dish custards that are unmolded for serving as first-course or luncheon dishes, or as an accompaniment to roast chicken or veal, broiled chicken, veal chops, or broiled fish. Use about 2½ cups peeled, blanched, and chopped broccoli in place of the zucchini (
timbale de courgettes
), or in place of the asparagus in Volume I, page 440.

EGGPLANT

Aubergines

Eggplant, like broccoli, is in season all year round, and is a marvelously versatile vegetable. National indifference to the eggplant, however, is so vast that our average per capita consumption amounts to only one modest serving once a year. Yet the eggplant has enormous potentialities besides French-frying, certainly the least interesting way of cooking this handsome vegetable. You may bake, broil, boil, sauté, stuff, soufflé, and gratiné eggplant, as well as serve it hot, cold, alone, or together with meat, fish, fowl, or other vegetables. Volume I contains a splendid eggplant stuffed with mushrooms, and
moussaka
and
ratatouille,
the first a marvelous mold of eggplant and lamb, and the second a Provençal casserole of eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and onions. Here you will find it broiled, cold
à la grecque
with tomatoes and herbs, sautéed in various unusual forms, baked with meat, with cheese, and souffléed. Eggplant will also turn up in other parts of this book, as a filling, stuffing, or accompaniment to many a main dish.

HOW TO BUY EGGPLANT

Although you will occasionally see locally grown baby eggplant and small sizes, either round or egg-shaped, almost the entire large-scale commercially raised crop in this country consists of the big, dark-purple varieties weighing 1 to 2 pounds but going up even to 5 pounds. They are roundish, egg-shaped or bell-shaped, and half of all the harvest comes from Florida, whose climate and long growing season are ideal for eggplant.

Size is no signal of quality, because all eggplants are harvested when the fruit is still immature—the seeds sparse and soft, the flesh firm. When eggplants mature, the flesh softens, the seeds grow larger and tougher, and both seeds and flesh turn bitter.

When you are
buying eggplants, therefore, look at each one carefully all over, which means that if they are packed in a plastic-covered carton you must open it up. Make sure that the skin is sleek and shiny, that it is taut over the flesh, that there are no pockmarks, brown spots, or wrinkles anywhere. Press each fruit gently all over to be sure the flesh is firm and resistant. Avoid any eggplant that is dull, wrinkled, blemished, or even slightly soft, because the flesh will have an off-flavor you can do nothing to correct.

STORING EGGPLANT

Unlike most other vegetables, eggplants store best at 45 to 50 degrees but even under these conditions the storage limit is only about 10 days. Unless you have a cold-room, therefore, buy eggplants only a day or two before you plan to cook them. In a cool kitchen, keep them in a plastic bag with a damp paper towel for humidity; in summer, you will have to refrigerate them. Under refrigeration, however, they will develop surface pitting and brown spots within 4 to 5 days, and begin to soften.

You may have wondered why a particular eggplant recipe sometimes comes off perfectly and at other times does not have the tender, delicious quality you remembered before. The answer is probably either that the eggplant was not really firm, fresh, and immature when you bought it, or that it had been kept too long under refrigerated storage.

PRELIMINARIES TO COOKING

Peeling, salting, blanching

Eggplant skin is edible when cooked long enough, as in a
moussaka,
gratinéed dish, or other recipe involving an hour in the oven. For the rapidly done sautés and for eggplant simmered
à la grecque,
cooking is so short that the skin remains rather tough and stringy.

Most recipes for eggplant direct that it be either macerated in salt or blanched in boiling salted water before the main cooking begins. There are three reasons for this. The first is to eliminate the slight bitterness usually present in even the youngest and freshest specimens, the second is to remove excess vegetable water that otherwise exudes during cooking, and the final one is to prevent the eggplant from absorbing too much oil or fat. You will find, in a comparison of sautés, that plain cubed eggplant will blot up 3 times more sautéing oil than blanched eggplant, that salted eggplant will use half as much as plain eggplant, and that blanched eggplant, which requires the least oil, will be the most tender of the three but have slightly less flavor. We therefore recommend salting in most recipes, and blanching only when we have found it is the best solution.

Salting, however, requires a wait of 30 minutes while the excess vegetable water slowly works its way out of the flesh, and if you are in a tearing hurry do not hesitate to blanch. To do so, drop the eggplant into salted boiling water after you have peeled and cubed or sliced it; boil slowly, uncovered, for 3 to 5 minutes or until it is almost tender but still holds its shape, then proceed with the recipe.

AUBERGINES EN TRANCHES, GRATINÉES

[Broiled Eggplant Slices]

Broiling and sautéing are by far the easiest ways of cooking eggplant, and thick slices of broiled eggplant are attractive to serve. Actually, the following recipe is a combination of baking, to soften the eggplant, then broiling, with a topping of tomatoes and bread crumbs. Serve with steaks, chops, roast lamb, broiled fish or chicken, or as a garnish with poached, scrambled, or fried eggs.

For 4 people

1)
Salting the eggplant

2 to 2½ lbs. fresh, shiny, firm, unblemished eggplant

A large tray

1½ tsp salt

Paper towels

Cut off cap, shave nubbin off bottom, and wash the eggplant (or eggplants), but do not peel. You are now to cut the eggplant into slices all somewhat the same dimension, 3 to 4 inches long, 2 inches wide, and ½ to ¾ inch thick. If you have large ones, for instance, cut the center slices into 4, other sizes into 3 or 2. Arrange on tray. Sprinkle salt on both sides and let sit for 20 to 30 minutes. Drain and press dry with paper towels.

2)
Preliminary baking of the eggplant—oven preheated to 400 degrees

½ to ⅔ cup olive oil

Either
1 or 2 cloves mashed garlic;

Or
3 Tb minced shallots or scallions

¼ to ½ tsp mixed herbs (
herbes de Provence,
Italian seasoning, or thyme, oregano, and rosemary)

Big pinch pepper

A 4-inch bowl

A 14-inch pizza tray or jelly-roll pan

A cover, or aluminum foil

Blend the oil, the garlic or shallots or scallions, and the herbs and pepper in the bowl, dip each slice into the mixture, drain, and arrange slices slightly overlapping on pizza tray or pan. Reserve remaining oil mixture for later. Cover eggplant and bake in middle level of preheated 400-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until eggplant is almost but not quite tender; do not let it overcook and turn limp, but it must cook long enough to soften.