Cult of the Aubergine

My fellow Americans. Friends. Compatriots. I posit to you that we, as a nation, have overlooked (and undercooked!) the humble aubergine. (Or eggplant, as we call it, but I prefer "aubergine," as that term is cognate to the word for said vegetable in pretty much every single language!)

I myself hated it as a youth. Then I traveled to Russia at 20 and was convinced to try it at a Georgian restaurant. I was told they cooked it much better than we did, and man did those eggplant rolls look amazing. (They so are, if you're wondering.) Imagine my surprise when instead of a densely spongy, slightly bitter mouthful I found it to be a rich and melt-in-your mouth... I don't know... amazingness. Nothing that tasty should be called a vegetable. I mean, I guess some people might find the way it looks unappealing, as bits are somewhat stringy and if you cut it just right the seeds look like they are eggs in a bizarre alien ovary (which I guess they sort of are), but the taste is just amazing and it always seems to me to taste much fattier than the amount of oil it's cooked in could account for (which, to an American, is a good thing :p).

Anyway, I am very happy that the Turks seem to share my batshit craziness for all things aubergine. I just had a very simple, cheap, but incredibly tasty meal of beef stewed with aubergine and rice at Meydan Döner near the metro. Also popular here is an aubergine kebab, which is basically aubergine stuffed with spiced ground meat and grilled. Sounds tasty.

So. I shall undertake a mission to proselytize the aubergine message, to convert others to adopt our favorite vegetable, to grow it in abundance (if we can get a bumper crop in containers on our garage in Wisconsin, I think you can grow it almost anywhere), and most importantly, to finally learn how to cook it well and to share that knowledge with others. (I've managed to cook okay eggplant before-- you have to leech out the bitterness-causing-stuff and then cook the crap out of it-- but I have always been too impatient to cook truly great eggplant. One day.)

Oddest fruit yet

As I was walking home today, I passed the small produce market that is kitty-corner from my apartment, as I usually do.  The two side walls are open and the tables and bins of fruit pour out and stake a claim on part of the sidewalk as theirs.  I often look over the fruit that's set out on the sidewalk tables and peer inside to see what is there today, what looks good, and what looks just plain interesting.  So as I walked by, I saw two little foam trays piled with small brown fruit and saran wrapped.  I did not recognize these fruits.  They were about the size of a traditional red rubber ball or a really enormous gumball.  They were the color of kiwis, but not as furry-- they had more of maybe a peach fuzz, not even that much.  And the bottom was sort of open, with long sepals, like a rose hip.  I saw these:

From www.comfortablyhungry.com

Yeah, you don't know what they are either.  I was peering very carefully at them, positing that maybe they were some sort of whole nut with the flesh around it and that maybe if I could see in the bottom hole I'd be able to tell that there was a hazelnut or whatever in there.  As I'm bending down, squinting into the package from like three inches away as though I were Sherlock Holmes and this were The Case of the Mysterious Fruit, the owner comes up.  And says something to me.

I started out, of course, with my standard response to anyone speaking any Turkish to me in public: "Uhhhh....." Luckily, though, I had just come from Turkish lessons!  "Bu ne?" I asked, pointing.  ("What is it?")  I know more fruit/nut/etc. vocabulary than anything else, as most exotic fruits in Russian share the Turkish name.  But I did not understand his response.  He beckoned me inside the store.

In there was a large box full of them.  He broke one in half, bit into one part and handed me the other, gesturing for me to try it.  Before I could, though, he stopped me and sort of signed -- wait, be careful.  Then he made a sour face and impressed upon me that it would leave a sort of weird feeling in your mouth and throat.  Astringent, got it.  I bit in, and damn. He was not half joking.  It was way worse than even a raw quince.  Like, raw quince I could maybe eventually get used to in very small bites.  This was... I don't even know what this was.  It was sharp.  Oh, I know what it was like! It was very much like a crab-apple.  Only instead of taking a teeny tiny, sneakily exploratory nibble from a crab-apple off my granny's tree, it was a pretty good-sized bite of... whatever this was.  He good-naturedly laughed at the face I made.  He asked if I liked it and/or if I wanted some, and I emphatically said no.

I was looking around at the other produce, thinking partly that now I felt I had to buy something, but also that I could do with some fruit or veg in my diet this weekend, when he tapped me on the shoulder.  He had another one in his hand.  He spoke rapidly and made several gestures comparing this one to the previous one I'd eaten.  This new one looked sort of shriveled and a bit rotten.  But from reading about quinces, I knew that bletting was a thing.  (Bletting is sort of like post-ripening but pre-rotting.  Only some fruits do it.  In the above link, the example is actually this fruit!)  So I guessed that he was telling me that this new fruit had been bletted and would now be tasty.

And oh man, it really was.  It tasted sort of like applesauce (and had approximately the same consistency, but was gooier and sticky), but like it was made with pears or quince instead-- though, while it was a bit mealy, it wasn't as mealy as pears or quince are.  (Also note that all these fruits are related so the similarities are not totally random.)

I actually thought about buying some but it seemed like they were a bit picked-over and not many bletted ones were left.  I didn't want to buy the others and let them sit awhile because that seemed like a good recipe for me to forget about them and they would stay there until they were beyond bletted and had rotted but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference and I'd eat them anyway. (I bought two big beautiful pomegranates for 1 USD instead.  Combined, not each.  I will rub this in your collective faces because you can go eat tacos and I can't so you actually come out ahead.)

The man brought his teenaged son over, I believe saying that said son spoke English but in fact he only knew a few words and could understand little more.  I did learn that he did not know the name of the fruit in English but that it was native to Turkey.  I asked him to write down the Turkish name-- muşmula.

At home I looked it up.  In English, the name is medlar.  I have never, in my whole entire life, heard of a medlar.  Neat.

Interesting fact: in literature such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, and continuing through the 16th and 17th centuries, medlars are often called "open-arses" because, well... yeah.  Also they are a symbol for prostitution, because they have rotted before they are ripe.  (Their appearance in British Literature makes me wonder if they eat medlars in Britain.  They are closer to the Mediterranean than we are, after all.)

Anyhow.  Here are a couple photos showing what they look like merely ripe vs bletted (both photos from Wikipedia):

Groceries round the world!

This is so interesting: Groceries Around the World. It's a series of photos showing what a week's worth of groceries for a family look like in various countries. Very pertinent to my ideas about cooking abroad!

Commentary: I heard they drank a lot of Coke in Mexico, but damn, that's a lot of Coke. And from me, that's saying something. 

Also, look at all the delicious fruit and veg we have here in Turkey! Just two nights ago I was walking home much later than I usually do, at nearly midnight, and there was this big random-ass impromptu (?) market in the square and street. I bought two of the most amazing mandarins I've ever eaten for 25 kurus (like 12.5¢). Mm. 

Last of the persimmons!

Yesterday I made Persimmon Rice Pudding. Skipped orange zest as per reviews; added a teaspoon of cinnamon and one tablespoon of the sugar was infused with vanilla (that's how they do vanilla flavoring here [and in Russia]).

It was pretty damn good.