Tortang talong

Whole aubergines charred black, peeled, flattened and set in egg.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce. Everything else in it is vegetarian, so it becomes a vegetarian dish if you use vegetarian fish sauce — which is sold, including by Thai brands.

Ingredients

• 4 long aubergines
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 0.5 teaspoon black pepper
• 4 tablespoons oil

Method

1. CHAR THE SKIN ON THE FLAME, directly on a gas burner or under a grill turned as high as it goes, turning until the whole aubergine is black and has gone slack. 10 to 12 minutes. Roasting them in an oven cooks them through and gives you none of the smoke, which is the point of doing it this way.
2. Drop them into a bowl and cover it for 5 minutes. The steam lifts the skin off the flesh.
3. Peel from the stem down, keeping the stem attached. The stem is the handle you turn the thing with in the pan.
4. Lay each one on a board and press it flat with a fork, fanning the flesh out from the stem. Press firmly -- a thick one sits in the egg instead of sitting in it.
5. Beat the eggs with the fish sauce and pepper until completely uniform, with no streaks of white left.
6. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a small frying pan. Dip one aubergine in the egg, let it drip for a second, and lay it in the pan. Spoon another tablespoon of egg over the top.
7. 2 minutes, until set at the edge. Turn by the stem, 1 minute. One at a time, one tablespoon of oil each.
8. Eat with rice and a saucer of vinegar with crushed garlic in it.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes