NEVER Fry Your Eggplant Again — Try This Old ITALIAN Trick Instead

Pour oil into a pan, put eggplant in it, and the oil vanishes. Every time. That is not bad cooking. An eggplant is a honeycomb full of empty air pockets, and it drinks until there is nothing left to drink, which is why fried eggplant comes out heavy and greasy and why nobody takes a second piece. My mother Filomena never had that problem in her kitchen in Bensonhurst, because she did two things first. She salted it, and she put a plate and a can of tomatoes on top of it for an hour. Once the water is out and the air pockets are closed, a sponge stops being a sponge, and two spoonfuls of brushed oil do the work of half a bottle. In this one I count down ten old Italian tricks, and every one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. How to pick a dense young eggplant by weight, why the skin stays on, how thick to cut it, the salting, drying it properly, brushing the oil instead of pouring it, the screaming hot tray that replaces the frying pan, why crowding ruins a tray, when the salt and the lemon go on, and at number one, the weight. I also settle the argument about whether modern eggplant still needs salting at all. No fryer, no gadgets, no half a bottle of oil. Deep gold and crisp outside, creamy inside, the old way. So tell me where you are cooking from, and tell me what your family did with eggplant in August when there was too much of it.