Wednesday 2 April 2008

Moldovan aubergine pancakes

Polish: bakłażan
Sranan: bulansyey
Malagasy: baranjely
Kashmiri: वाँगुन्
Tagalog: talóng
Bahasa Melayu: terung
Swahili: mbilingani
Papiamento: berehein
Tonga: paingani
Tajik: Боқлаҷон

Back to the discussion what should be called fruit and what should be called vegetable... How about aubergine? Actually, it should be denominated a fruit, cause from biological point of view it is a true berry, together with plantain, guava or grape. Let's see: there are several dishes from aubergine in the world cuisines that are sweet: Indonesian sweet aubergine stew semur terong, breaded eggplants dipped in honey (also Asian delicacy), Turkish eggplant marmalade (is it really sweet?) and Japanese eggplant... ice cream! (about the last one I am absolutely unsure of its sweetness, since Japanese produce and... consume... crab, eel, cheese or potato ice cream...). Aubergines are something new in Poland, my grandmum for instance never cooked them. I like them a lot, that is why regularily I browse the net in search of some new aubergine recipes, since there are no original Polish aubergine recipes. Lately I visited www.moldova.org and I found a nice collection of Moldovan recipes. First I tried eggplant pancakes, placinta cu vinete, something really, really tasty!

1 big eggplant
1 egg
3-4 tablespoons flour*
salt, pepper

1. Bake eggplant in the oven until its skin becomes dark. Peel, take the seeds off if they are big. Drain and chop.

2. Whisk the egg, add flour* (the recipe speaks about 1 tablespoon but I had to add more cause with only one I couldn't fry the pancakes), chopped eggplant, salt and pepper to taste.

3. Fry! What a great alternative for Polish potato pancakes! Serve with salads or pickles.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A lot of the weird Japanese ice creams are sweet... even the sea salt ice cream.

Ewa said...

Your blog about ice cream is amazing! I've just been there... Did you taste... charcoal or cuttlefish ice cream? Or aubergine ice cream? Are they sweet? I am asking cause in Italy there are savoury sorts of ice cream, like garlic :)