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Eggplant and Other Vegetables
Appears in
By David Dale and Somer Sivrioglu
Published 2015
Eggplants (aubergines) are even more common than lamb in Turkish recipes (usually disguised under poetic titles rather than their own name, patlıcan), so you might imagine we grew them first. But they seem to have been brought into Anatolia from India by Arab traders at least 3000 years ago. Per capita, Turks are the greatest consumers of eggplants in the world.
The best way to cook eggplant is to pierce the skin with a fork and put it directly over fire—either the embers of a barbecue or the gas flame of your stove. Be careful, though. Historians writing about Istanbul in the seventeenth century record frequent destruction of property due to ‘eggplant fires’, because householders would put them over flames and walk away, letting them drop onto the wooden floor.