How to Get Eggplant Right

When an eggplant dish is bad, it’s enough to put you off eggplant forever. But when it’s good, it’s heaven. Yotam Ottolenghi’s new recipe promises celestial results.

LONDON — It’s a fine line, when you cook, between success and failure. I am always surprised by how tipping the balance in a dish can so easily transform it from delectable to inedible. How many times have you oversalted or undercooked a dish? When did you last lament wasting a fistful of pine nuts or a beautiful piece of fish, just because of a careless extra minute or two in the pan?

Eggplants are particularly prone to such disasters. I know some pretty confident cooks who, after a couple of memorable failures, wouldn’t touch them with a pole. It’s not that they are that hard to cook (though they do take a bit of practice to get right). It has more to do with how unmitigated these failures are. A limp, gray, rubbery, undercooked chunk of eggplant could easily put you off for life. Likewise, a slice that has spent too much time in a frying pan with oil that wasn’t hot enough, going dark and bitter and terribly fatty, wouldn’t turn anyone into a fan.