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When I think about a vegetable and the different ways to cook it, I always ask myself, “Will it fritter?”
Sometimes the vegetable needs cooking before it becomes a fritter (like the kale in these) and the fritter becomes a tasty vehicle for leftovers. Other vegetables go directly from garden (or produce section) to fritter. These zucchini fritters and latkes, which are basically potato fritters, are good examples. My fritters derive from an Italian recipe for subrich (SOO-brick) that combines the vegetable with garlic and Parmigiano cheese for flavor and binds everything with egg and breadcrumbs before pan frying in olive oil. It works with lots of vegetables and makes them delicious.
But even though I love eggplant and use it for everything from eggplant Parm to rice dressing to baba ghanouj, I’d never made eggplant fritters. And I hadn’t really planned to when I was headed down a rabbit hole about an old Catalonian Sephardic dish called almodrote. Sometimes called almadroc, it’s essentially a condiment made by pounding garlic and cheese together in a mortar to use as a flavoring for eggplant in an Old World dish called almodrote de berengena. Modern versions, found all around the Mediterranean, evolved into a baked casserole that combines the garlic and cheese with boiled or roasted eggplant, raw or boiled egg, breadcrumbs, and often mint or other herbs. Somewhere I read that the same mix was sometimes formed into patties and fried, and I’d found my answer. Eggplant will fritter.
Recipe
1 large globe eggplant (about 2½ pounds)
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
2 eggs
½ cup breadcrumbs
6-8 sprigs mint, arugula, or cilantro, chopped*
½ teaspoon kosher-style sea salt*
Extra virgin olive oil for frying
*Or a combination of any of these herbs. You want a total of about ½ cup loosely packed after chopping; feta can be very salty, so cook a small test fritter before adding the salt.
Poke the eggplant a few times with a knife (this lets steam escape and prevents exploding) and roast it whole at 350 degrees for an hour or until it becomes very soft and collapses. When it’s cool, slice off the stem end, cut it lengthwise into quarters, and peel away the skin. Use the back of a knife to gently scrape the skins to get every last bit of the creamy interior. Discard the skins and put the cooked eggplant in a colander set over a bowl. Let it drain for at least an hour.
Coarsely chop the drained eggplant and mix with the other ingredients except the salt. Heat a skillet over medium, add a drizzle of olive oil, and fry a spoonful of the eggplant mix until brown on both sides, about 4 minutes each side. Taste and add salt to the mix if needed.
Add enough olive to cover the bottom of the hot skillet. Use two spoons to form roughly egg-sized fritters, slide them into the oil, and gently flatten them. Cook a few at a time for about 4 minutes or until nicely browned, then flip and cook the other side. Keep the cooked fritters warm in a low oven while you fry the rest. Like all fritters, the leftovers are also good eaten like burgers.
