What is a tasty, satisfying, unique, and fairly easy-to-prepare dish to take to your Seder? Allow me to introduce you to Almodrote, a Turkish Sephardic dish that makes use of common ingredients to produce something that is greater than the sum of its parts. The first step is to char your eggplants. This is what gives it the unmistakable flavor associated with this dish.
To start, pierce your eggplants with a fork a few times so that the heated one does not explode. After years of holding an eggplant over a hot flame with a pair of tongs, I witnessed this clever use of a baker’s cake cooking rack, which stood just high enough above the flame to allow for a perfect char. When choosing eggplant, you can see here that I had both the long and thin as well as the fat and bulbous. It is tempting to get all your eggplant needs taken care of with the bulbous one, but you will discover that this variety has a great many seeds while the long and thin ones have fewer.
Remove the charred and well-collapsed eggplant and set them in a colander over a sink. The juices will drip away. While they are cooling, you can prepare the rest of your ingredients.
2 large eggplants
8 oz feta cheese
2 eggs
4 T bread crumbs or matzoh meal
1 cup gruyere
4 T vegetable oil
6 garlic cloves (optional)
Method:
- In a large bowl, mash the feta cheese with a fork, add the beaten eggs, minced garlic, bread crumbs or matzoh meal, ¼ cup of the gruyere, and 4 T of the vegetable oil. Beat together well.
- Using your hands as your tools, squeeze out the water and juice from the eggplant and keep squeezing it a few times more until it’s nice and chunky. Add to egg and cheese mixture and mix well.
- Pour the entire combination into an oiled baking dish, such as an 8 x 8 pyrex, and finish with the remaining gruyere and the last T of oil. Bake at 350° for about 50 minutes until lightly colored. Because of the color of eggplant, this dish does not sparkle the way so many others do. But do not be fooled. It’s really scrumptious.
Allow to cool, cut into squares the size of large brownies. Can be served warm or at room temperature.
