10.12.08
Eggplant Fritters
I promised to let you know how I used my excess muhammara from the September Daring Bakers challenge. Because of its Middle Eastern flavors, I decided to do an entire meal in that vein, using up both my leftover dip and an intimidating ingredient I bought on the spur of the moment: eggplant. I’m actually not sure I had ever eaten eggplant before, but it falls into that suspicious fruit-as-vegetable category that I tend to avoid like the plague, largely because of the mush factor. When faced with a scary vegetable, I find that frying it is often a good first approach, both because it imparts crunch and because—be honest—practically everything tastes better fried. So I decided to try making eggplant fritters for my introduction to the fregetable.
I have to admit, eggplant is a lovely piece of produce to look at, with that graceful shape, colorful skin and firm white flecked interior.
Doesn’t look nearly as appealing after being peeled, diced and boiled, though. Next time I’m going to try roasting in the skin.
The fritter batter looks even less appetizing, like dog food. I took a leap of faith and fried it up anyway, instead of giving Freyja an extra meal.
I served the fritters with muhammara and chicken skewers seasoned with the same Moroccan spice blend I mixed up for the roasted chickpeas, a failsafe measure in case I disliked the fritters (and Adagio’s Moroccan mint tea, Casablanca Twist). They turned out to be alright, though: they looked like edible food, and didn’t taste like anything in particular. I guess that’s what the muhammara was for, though, and I admit to going easy on the spices. The batter was very soft and didn’t hold together well, leading to mushy and misshapen fritters, but that may have been because I got distracted by the baby and forgot to add the eggs and flour at the end. Whoops. Binding agents would have been helpful, I must say. So I should probably give these another chance, and then maybe even move on to something that doesn’t entirely mask the eggplant’s flavor. Baby steps, right?
. (What is the difference, by the way? In some recipes, galettes and crostatas appear to be the same thing, just French and Italian, respectively.) I made the pie crust in my food processor the day before the party, then rolled it and filled it and baked it off the next morning. I’ll definitely use this crust again, as it produced very flaky results and wasn’t too fussy to work with. Wish I could say the same for the peaches, which refused to slip their skins neatly despite two blanchings. The galette was absolutely simple to put together, and looked beautiful until I poured the simple custard over the fruit: it spilled right over the sides of the crust and burned, so it was fortunate I had the foresight to be baking on a silpat. I’m still not quite sure what it added to the finished galette, and it made such a sloppy presentation that I saved it as a tidbit for the guests of honor to sample, rather than putting it out for everyone. It was, however, delicious, both at room temperature and sliced straight from the fridge the next day. Jeremy wasn’t really interested in trying it at first, but said it had really grown on him by the time we finished it off, and I, who love nectarines but not peaches (especially cooked ones), am now very tempted to make the custardy peach pie from the same book next summer.
