Vegetables Egg Plant (Fried & Stuffed)

egg plant
(from The Virginia House-wife, by Mary Randolph, 1825)

Ingredients:

Fried Version:​

Purple Egg Plants​

Egg Yolk​

grated bread​

salt and pepper​

​

Stuffed Version:​

Purple Egg Plants​

rich forcemeat​

well seasoned gravy​

Instructions:

The purple ones are best; get them young and fresh; pull out the stem, and parboil them to take off the bitter taste; cut them in slices an inch thick, but do not peel them; dip them in the yelk of an egg, and cover them with grated bread, a little salt and pepper--when this has dried, cover the other side the same way--fry them a nice brown. They are very delicious, tasting much like soft crabs. The egg plant may be dressed in another manner: scrape the rind and parboil them; cut a slit from one end to the other, take out the seeds, fill the space with a rich forcemeat, and stew them in well seasoned gravy, or bake them, and serve up with gravy in the dish.​

 

[donna]

My Mom loved egg plant. Thanks for this recipe.

 

[LoyaltyOfDogs]

Egg Plant
From "The Virginia Housewife", By Mary Randolph, 1860

The purple ones are best; get them young and fresh; pull out the stem, and parboil them to take off the bitter taste; cut them in slices an inch thick, but do not peel them; dip them in the yelk of an egg, and cover them with grated bread, a little salt and pepper--when this has dried, cover the other side the same way--fry them a nice brown. They are very delicious, tasting much like soft crabs. The egg plant may be dressed in another manner: scrape the rind and parboil them; cut a slit from one end to the other, take out the seeds, fill the space with a rich forcemeat, and stew them in well seasoned gravy, or bake them, and serve up with gravy in the dish.

I thought the skins would be too tough, even when fried, so we always peeled the eggplant when making eggplant parmesan. What are they like when cooked as Mary Randolph recommends, @Albert Sailhorst? Do they become soft and chewy? Or are they crispy?

 

[Albert Sailhorst]

I thought the skins would be too tough, even when fried, so we always peeled the eggplant when making eggplant parmesan. What are they like when cooked as Mary Randolph recommends, @Albert Sailhorst? Do they become soft and chewy? Or are they crispy?

I haven't made them this way yet.
But, when I do, like you, my personal experience tells me to peel them!
I suppose you could peel half of one and leave the other half un-peeled, and see which is better!