French-Fried Eggplant

This simple preparation was my first favorable impression of eggplant, a vegetable then as mysterious and exotic to me as cardoons and salsify. Italian P.O.W.’s awaiting the end of the war in some kind of political limbo cooked for the mess at a military hospital where I struggled with my summer job. Unauthorized crashers were always trying to sidle into our mess hall, the envy of the airbase.