The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Persian · Starter

Mirza Ghasemi

  • Easy
  • 40 min
  • roughly 1 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

earthy · charred · aromatic · smoky Leads with an earthy, grounding base, char used as punctuation, on a drift of smoke.

Ingredients

  • 1.2 kg aubergines
  • 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 400 g ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped
  • 90 ml sunflower oil
  • 5 g ground turmeric
  • 3 eggs
  • 8 g salt
  • 2 g black pepper

Equipment

Grill

The skills inside

Grilling over live coalsCharring over open flameSautéing & the shallow fryStraining & passing through a sieve

Allergen screen

Found: egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Char the whole aubergines directly on a gas flame or over coals, turning, until the skin is black and blistered everywhere and the body collapses when pressed, 15 to 20 minutes. 20 min
  2. Peel them while hot, drain the flesh in a sieve for 10 minutes, then chop it coarsely with a knife. 10 min
  3. Soften the garlic in the oil over medium-low heat until pale gold and sweet smelling, never brown, then stir in the turmeric for 20 seconds.
  4. Add the aubergine and fry, pressing and turning, until the water has gone and it sizzles rather than steams; add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and cook until no liquid pools when you draw the spoon through.
  5. Push the mixture aside, break the eggs into the bare pan, let them just set, then fold them through in streaks rather than beating them in.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Charring over open flame 31 recipes

  • The surface met the fiercest heat available (flame, a broiler, or bare hot metal) with nothing between them, and it shows as true blistering and blackening rather than gentle, even browning.
  • The char matches the surface’s fate: where it will be eaten, black sits in patches over deep colour with every face having had its turn, and where the skin is to be peeled away, it may go to an even black, because the char there works on the flesh below and then leaves with the skin.
  • It smells of smoke and toasted surface with no acrid edge that stings the nose: acrid means it went past, and acrid does not cook out.
  • Just under the char it is cooked (softened, steaming, collapsed, or puffed, whichever the dish wants) because the flame did the surface and the trapped heat did the rest.
  • A taste carries the smoke without mouthfuls of ash: the black that flakes away is a seasoning, not a layer.

Where it goes wrong It was left on one face too long or held too close, so one side carbonised to ash while the rest stayed raw, and the smell turned acrid, which follows the dish through every later step and cannot be seasoned away.

Grilling over live coals 77 recipes

  • The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
  • The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
  • Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
  • The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
  • What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.

Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.

At the Table

The Pour
Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
Also Right
Vermentino for the lighter plates
From the Taps
Italian pilsner
Zero-Proof
San Pellegrino Sanbittèr

Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Mirza Ghasemi The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Persian kitchen