Friday 6 July 2007

Recipe: Aubergine with Garlic & Anchovy


For this recipe, you need to use aubergines with rich, dark skins. I've tried it with the lighter skinned variety - the comparative sweetness of which causes the italians to salivate - but with the latter, the skins are surprisingly tough, and appear to become tougher during cooking, whilst the flesh has a tendency to go to mush. I also think the bitterness of the darker skinned variety works better against the strong flavours of garlic and anchovy than the milder flavour of the lighter skinned aubergines.

For Four.

Ingredients: 2 large Aubergines; 2 Anchovy fillets (nice fat ones); 2 large cloves of Garlic; a cup of Parsley leaves, loosely packed; 30g Butter; 2 tablespoons of Olive Oil; Salt.

Method:

1. Chop the Aubergines into 1 cm cubes, place in a colander, sprinkle lightly with salt, and leave for an hour to throw off their water; once done, run the cubes under cold water to wash off the salt, and roughly pat dry in a tea towel.

2. Heat the Oil and Butter together in a medium sized saute pan.

3. Chop the Garlic and Parsley, add to the pan and saute for several minutes over a medium-high heat, then add the Anchovy fillets, and cook for several more minutes, stirring quite vigorously to begin to break up the fillets.

4. Add the Aubergine Cubes, and cook, uncovered, for about ten minutes, stirring frequently to ensure that the cubes are more or less coated with pieces of Garlic and Anchovy. The aubergine cubes are cooked once they have started to turn brown.

Before serving, taste one of the cubes to see if any more salt is needed. Adjust accordingly.

4 comments:

Joanna said...

The trouble is, with a recipe this delicious, I taste one cube to see if it's ready, and then another, and then ... so I need to make double

Pomiane said...

Shades of having to taste 'all the way to the bottom of the glass - just in case!

Anonymous said...

Is it really necessary to salt and drain aubergines these days? I haven't done it for some time and can't say that they're bitter. I like the idea of this recipe, anchovy and garlic - a marriage made in heaven as far as I'm concerned.

Pomiane said...

Interesting you should say that - it's something I've been pondering for some time, re both aubergines and courgettes. I suspect very often it isn't - especially when you look at the pathetic dribbles of liquid that so often result. I went through a phase of not bothering, and then found I got caught out on a couple of occasions, where the amount of water that came out in cooking just turned the dish into a rather hopeless mush. So, I've gone back to it, rather on a 'better safe than sorry' basis.....