On Food and Cooking

eggplants shrink down to a relatively small
volume when cooked. The other is that when
fried, raw eggplant pieces soak up oil, leaving
little on the pan for lubrication and making
the vegetable very rich. In some preparations
— such as the famous Arab dish Imam
bayaldi, “the priest fainted,” in which halved
eggplants are stuffed and baked in copious
olive oil — this richness is desired and
maximized. Otherwise, the absorptiveness of
eggplant can be reduced by collapsing its
spongy structure before frying. This is
accomplished by precooking it —
microwaving works well — or by salting
slices to draw out moisture from the cells and
into the air pockets. Salting is often
recommended as a way to remove the
bitterness sometimes found in older eggplants
grown in dry conditions, but it probably just
reduces our perception of the alkaloids (p.
640); the bulk of the cell fluids remains in the
cells.