Aubergine and its many aliases

Recipe for aubergines roasted with tahinia from Bethlehem by Fadi Kattan

I’d guess that my first childhood brushes with aubergine would be mousakka on Greek holidays always memorable for expanding my young palate, brinjal pickle at the local Indian, and Mum’s ratatouille.

A vegetable (well, a fruit really) that’s well travelled, I’ve always known it as aubergine, latterly eggplant here in Australia, and brinjal only in the context of that pickle. I was unaware that some would or have called it melongene, garden egg, guinea squash, brown-jolly, mad-apple and more.

If I were to answer without thinking I’d have said that aubergine was French, or at least Mediterreanean, but only by my experience. But I’d be underestimating its travels, with domesticated origins in India and China where it has been cultivated for millennia, and evidence of a distinct and seperate African line of lineage.

We can thank the Moors for much of its movement, who introduced the eggplant into Southern and Eastern Europe; the etymology of the French word aubergine, itself said to be influenced initially by Catalan, which in turn had an Arabic influence.

Eggplant for me (as I’m now used to calling it here in Australia) is almost always roasted on the barbecue. Blackened, the skin splitting, I’ll rest it in a bowl and place a plate on top to steam. Whether that last step has any effect I don’t know, but it’s just something I’ve become accustomed to doing. I’ll retain the liquid, and scrape the smoky flesh from the skin, or sometimes roughly chop with the skin on. Yes there’s always the possiblity of baba ghanoush, but also the base of a salad with nuts, seeds and dried fruit, or an aubergine and tahini pasta dish which is something that I assumed was an Ottolenghi thing we’d picked up but it turns out it predates any published Ottolenghi recipe (though a quick Google of tahini pasta reveals that it’s hardly a stretch).

Fadi Kattan’s recipe below from Bethlehem (released in Australia on May 17th) has all the ingredients and more of a baba ghanosh, albeit the method gives you something different, more substantial; a dish that will doubtless make it into my regular rotation of aubergine (sorry, eggplant) dishes. Enjoy!

©Ashley Lima