Why I love eggplant
A surprising history of eggplants.
Let's face it: I cannot go to restaurants anymore. If I go, I will not eat anything there. My cooking became an enjoyable ride of discoveries. New flavors and scents, new ways to try old and familiar things. For us in Turkey, among the most recognizable products on our table is eggplant. I don't just like it, I adore it. The sharp taste of aubergine is like biting at the heritage of one's history. Eggplant is stubborn. You can do anything with it, but until you add salt, it wıll not relinquish its taste features easily. It is very much like our Turkish identity.
After all, it is not by mere chance we have here a dish called İmam Bayıldı. Legend has it that once the imam's wife prepared this dish and he, after being delighted with the dish and after not being able to stop himself, fainted from too much food. Its flavor, however, was not readily accepted outside of the Mediterranean.
Medieval Hell was resurrected on the northern tables with the arrival of eggplants. Legends rose about religious prohibitions of certain foods. Old, strict traditions have helped revive horrific punishments and even more horrific scenes. According to the Irish document from the 11th century, swallowers of exiled vegetables will float after death in a lake of pain, and in the 16th century, this terrible drop turned into a bitter drop squeezed from a ripe eggplant picked in a dark devil's garden. That terrible vegetable invoked the image of hell. In it, the hungry tormented on the tables will be offered food they will never be able to reach, and the most sinful, gluttons and adulterers, Beelzebub himself will put snakes down his throat along with those cursed aubergines and poison.
Opposite them, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in both the Christian and Islamic worlds, the eggplant appears as a harbinger of summer abundance, a vegetable that promises good food and the occasional exciting experience. Roasted, cooked, and filled with surprising ingredients... Experiences of this devilish-abundant veggie are astounding!