Moorish Eggplant
"Peel the eggplants and quarter them, and their skins having been peeled, set them to cook; and when they are well-cooked, remove them from the fire, and then squeeze them between two wooden chopping blocks, so they do not retain water. And then chop them with a knife. And let them go to the pot and let them be gently fried, very well, with good bacon or with sweet oil, because the Moors do not eat bacon. And when they are gently fried, set them to cook in a pot and cast in good fatty broth, and the fat of meat, and grated cheese which is fine, and above all, ground coriander; and then stir it with a haravillo like gourds; and when they are nearly cooked, put in egg yolks beaten with verjuice, as if they were gourds."
Libre del Coch, Ruperto de Nola, 1529
notes
As a dish, I found it rather unexciting and am very unlikely to ever prepare it again and it's appearance made it difficult to find any tasting volunteers.
By the time the eggplant was squished between to boards, it lost much of it's form though amazingly even after chopping, there was still evidence of it being a vegatable once. Frying seemed to soften it more, I was hoping for the opposite but only wanted to gently fry it as suggested.
For the cheese, I seriously did not know which to use so picked out some fairly dry surface ripened cheese which was added after the broth and last I threw in a fairly healthy dosage of coriander. St this point it looked somewhat displeasing but not too horribly so. It also did not taste to bad, I even found it a bit sweet. After adding the egg yolks with verjuice (I used just a little verjuice), words could not describe how it put me off. This was also a hard sell on many members of the family, though many braved it, non came back for seconds.
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