Swoon over stuffed eggplants

I saw her, I blushed, I turned pale at her sight. It is of course the eggplant, whose peak season is just beginning and will flourish in the heart of summer, between July and September, before yielding its last sun-soaked fruits in October and November before the frost. This is an opportunity to revisit some of its fascinating journeys, at the crossroads of conquests, exiles, and recipes.

In her Eggplant Travels[1], Nina Kehayan, daughter of Central European Jews who moved to Liège and then Paris before World War II, recounts the bonds woven in the kitchen with her mother-in-law Guldèné, who sought refuge in Marseille in the 1920s during the Armenian genocide: “After discreetly yet perceptively observing her daughter-in-law's behavior, Guldèné understood that winning her over would be more about tantalizing her taste buds than her eyes. Day by day, the young wife discovered the fragrant charms of Armenian cuisine, and the various ways to prepare eggplant were a revelation to her.”

Between winds and tides of oil

Stuffed, fried, mashed, in stew, pickled...: the eggplant recipes joyfully adopted by Nina Kehayan intertwine with those that have long enchanted Ottoman kitchens.

The fruit-vegetable is called patlıcan there and is the subject of a particularly abundant repertoire, to the extent that there is a “wind of eggplant” in Istanbul, the patlıcan meltemi. It is said that this caused great fires for centuries, devastating the wooden houses of the great city, due to the embers on which eggplants were grilled in the summer[2].

“In Turkey, we cook grilled, fried, breaded, dried eggplant..., as if it were meat or fish, and we even have a variety, rather long and thin, called 'field fish' due to its shape and a dish where it is coated with cornmeal,” explains Nurdane Bourcier, a cook and globe-trotter born in Turkey, who emigrated to France and then expatriated to Brazil. Trained at the Alain Ducasse school in Rio de Janeiro, she now resides in Istanbul after delighting Parisians in her restaurant Tamam Kitchen. In 2024, she published the recipe collection The Eggplant, Ten Ways to Prepare It with Éditions de l’Épure.

Her favorite recipe: vegetarian stuffed eggplant or imam bayıldı, an old Ottoman preparation that has enchanted blogs, magazines, and social networks for about twenty years. Nina herself was introduced to it by Guldèné the Armenian. “The imam bayıldı literally means the dish that makes the imam faint,” explains Nurdane. “It requires a large amount of olive oil, even more for confiting the onions in the stuffing than for cooking the eggplant. So either the imam was stingy and fainted at the excessive use of this prestigious product, or he was so greedy that he swooned from the intensity of pleasure!”

Heading West

Let’s wager that it was a dizzying satisfaction as the eggplant, a polymorphic and polychrome vegetable, sometimes cheeky, fills summer days. The common eggplant (Solanum melongena), the most cooked species in the world and itself divided into many varieties, is believed to have been domesticated in Southeast Asia before traveling east, for example to Japan and Korea, as well as westward. The Arabs played a crucial role in its dissemination around the Mediterranean from the 7^th and 8^th centuries, including in Muslim Spain and Sicily as early as the medieval period. The Middle Easterners welcomed it with open arms and mouths, perhaps even before its mention in Persian medical texts from the 9^th century[3].

In Christian Europe, it was initially relegated to ornamental or even medicinal uses due to its presumed toxicity: it is a cousin of mandrake and belladonna, two other solanaceous plants with a magical and especially toxic reputation. In the 15^th century, it was referred to as mala insana, “unhealthy apple,” or “madman’s apple”[4]. According to Claudia Roden, Jews leaving Spain and southern Italy amid persecution and expulsions significantly contributed to spreading the eggplant, of which they were fond, to more northern regions[5]. In France, it was of course Provence that led the way, bringing us back to Jean Kéhayan.

Love at first sight

Nina's husband was indeed born in 1944 in Marseille, a refuge city where tens of thousands of Armenians landed between 1922 and 1928. When Nina's parents, Moysze and Tauba, came to meet Jean's parents, Sétrak and Guldèné, in the South, they visited their vegetable garden. Tauba joyfully discovered, in this generous Phocaean garden, the eggplants she had tasted in the Bessarabia of her childhood: the eggplant had long spread in the possessions of the Ottoman Empire, first the Balkans and then southern Russia[6] where it is called baklajan. Then, “taken aback by Tauba's emotion, Sétrak commented: patlijan. Raised near Turkish villages, Sétrak mixed the two languages, forgetting that in his mother tongue, Armenian, it should be said: sempoug.”

Throughout its Mediterranean adventures, the eggplant itself eventually encountered another product from the Solanum genus, this time originating from the New World but equally alarming upon its arrival on the Old Continent: the tomato. The two formed a bubbling and lasting relationship, for example in Provençal ratatouille, Moroccan zaalouk, Italian parmigiana, pasta alla Norma, Greek moussaka, or even this delight that once made an imam swoon.

Recipe for Nurdane Bourcier's Vegetarian Stuffed Eggplant

Recipe from The Eggplant, Ten Ways to Prepare It, with the kind permission of Éditions de l’Épure.

For 4 people

Take 2 beautiful eggplants of the same length and roundness. Cut them in half lengthwise while keeping the stem. Sauté each side, browning the flesh side well. Season with salt and pepper and finish cooking in the oven at 200 °C. The flesh should be tender.

Peel and slice 2 large onions. Mix them with a pinch of salt and pour them into a small saucepan. Cover and let them stew over very low heat. The onion should retain its white color and become translucent. At this stage, add a pinch of sugar, another of allspice, a knob of butter, and generously drizzle with olive oil.

In a skillet, sauté about ten halved cherry tomatoes in a drizzle of olive oil over high heat. Turn off the heat, add a bit of crushed black pepper.

On a plate, place a slice of eggplant, mash the flesh to make room for the filling. Add the onion compote and the tomatoes. Garnish with finely chopped purple basil, drizzle with pomegranate molasses or freshly squeezed lemon juice.

[1] Nina Kehayan, Eggplant Travels, L’Aube, 2022 (first edition, 1988).

[2] Jean-Luc Hennig, Literary and Erotic Dictionary of Fruits and Vegetables, Albin Michel, 1994.

[3] Marie-Christine Daunay, “The Eggplant,” Where Do Our Vegetables Come From?, Summaries of the 2023 information days of the National Society of Horticulture of France (SNHF), November / December 2023.

[4] Jean-Marie Pelt, Vegetables, Fayard, 1993.

[5] Claudia Roden, The Book of Jewish Cuisine, Flammarion, 1996.

[6] Jean Vitaux, “The Eggplant,” Globalization at the Table, Presses Universitaires de France, 2009.

Mayalen Zubillaga, a culinary author, grew up on the shores of the Berre pond surrounded by fava beans, mullets, and petrochemical scents. Falling into a pot of meatballs when she was little, she cooks and writes in all directions, exploring both pan-bagnat, salted anchovies, and the ecumenical magic of chickpeas.