A question about a recipe: Yotam Ottolenghi's Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant Sauce

cookbookchick added 10 months ago

It's not you -- eggplant absorbs oil like a sponge. Reading the recipe, and from my own experience, I do not see how he could have so much oil left over after frying the eggplant.

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Katie Shields added 10 months ago

Thanks cookbookchick! I think I jumped the gun on the hotline. When there was about 2 minutes left in the fry time, the eggplant started to let go of the oil. In the end, I drained about 2-3 tablespoons.

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Kristen is the Senior Editor of Food52

added 10 months ago

Every time I've made this, there's been a decent amount of leftover oil -- Ii think one key is having the oil pretty hot when you start and keeping it hot, so it doesn't have as much of a chance to absorb. Most importantly, your medium eggplant may well have been larger than mine! Hope you like the sauce regardless.

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Salting always helps with oil absorptions too, as it does to remove bitterness from eggplant that is not very fresh. If you salt slices or cubes of eggplant in a colander for about an hour (just a sprinkling of whatever salt you use), then blot it dry, it won't soak in as much oil.

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