Ode to Eggplant

Paean to a Mysterious Black Fruit

BY Meg white

Friday was “allowance” day when I was growing up.Allowance in my case being the equivalent of payday for a privileged whitegirl who got financially rewarded for occasionally making her own bedor clearing away the dishes after the evening meal. Not a bad gig, if you couldget it. Once I hit adolescence, Fridays also meant dinner with my father anda trip to the record store, a scheme no doubt hatched by my mother, who hadbeen taking Transactional Analysis courses and reading books like I’mOkay, You’re Okay, On Becoming a Person, and TheFeminine Mystique.

Amazingly, for a kid who worshiped music as much as life itself, I lookedforward to dinner as much as shopping for the longed for 45s afterward. I wishI could say it was the special father-daughter time I was in so much anticipationof—I’d give anything to have a few more hours with the old mannow that he’s gone—but it wasn’t. The conversation betweenus was typically forced and awkward. I’d ask him about his tennis gameor “the office” and he’d buzz me about my classes or whateverart project I was flirting with that week. What I really longed for on thosenights was menu item number 9, Eggplant Parmigiana. It was love at first biteand sight.

Otherwise known as Eggplant Parmesan, Eggplant Parmigiana can often be a conglomerationof batter-dipped, deep-fried sliced eggplant, baked with enough cheese, spices,and tomato sauce that the main attraction is completely unrecognizable. Luckily,the Parmigiana I first encountered was nothing like the doughy, fat-drenchedimposters that often pass for the real deal. Number 9 at The Park Road SteakHouse was served exactly like its little picture on the menu—tender,thick slices of black beauty eggplant (the common, large purple variety), coatedwith a light dusting of bread crumbs, slowly baked (not fried) and layeredbetween moderate amounts of cheese and garlic-rich sauce with plenty of freshParmesan, parsley, and olives on top. The subtle, musky flavor of the fruit(like its seed-bearing cousin, the tomato, eggplant is indeed a fruit) wasnot only detectable but pronounced. Like many objects of desire, part of theallure of what the French call “aubergine” was and still is itsmystery.

So as the years passed I became more and more obsessed by what Linneausdubbed solanum melogena and its mysterious origins. Even the etiologyof that name is disputed. Some claim it is derived from the Arabian termfor the plant, others claim melogena means eggplant in Sanskrit. I preferthe theory that it is derived from the Italian melazana, which translatesas “mad apple.” Food lore holds that this interpretation isespecially appropriate because at one time eating eggplant was believedto cause insanity. It is also rumored the plant was formerly known as “ragingapple” and “love apple.” In his book Nightshades: theParadoxical Plants, Charles Hesier, Jr., says he does not know about theclaims that eggplant causes insanity or can be used as a “love potion,” butacknowledges that “everyone knows that love and insanity are closedallied.” This might explain my experience of love at first biteand subsequent obsession.

In the early 90s, I went so far as to produce a video about eggplantas a burgeoning cultural icon—interviewing artists, craftspersons,grocers, anthropologists, late-night shoppers, chefs, and random pedestriansabout their feelings and thoughts on the “mad apple.” Oneof my fondest discoveries was learning of a video game whose ultimateprize, after hours of exhaustive play, was “a showering of eggplantraining down like manna from heaven,” according to the interviewee.I found a woman who was building eggplant-shaped furniture for a clientand another who had a mighty impressive collection of melazana-relatedparaphernalia.

Then an odd thing happened toward the end of the shoot, which in retrospectis proof of the idea that “the past keeps telling us what the futureis about.” I was hiking at dawn in the winter’s first snowin Oakland Cemetery and came upon the infamous black angel. Somehow, someonehad gotten there before me and placed three plump black beauties at herfeet. I could find no noticeable footprints or tracks and I had the feelingthe fruit had been left there as an offering of some kind. The videographerin me yelled “RUN HOME AND GRAB YOUR CAMERA!” but I couldn’tdo it. There was another voice in me not nearly as loud but more persuasiveand commanding. It said, “Be still and enjoy this moment for whatit is,” that what I was experiencing was sacred and too importantto be co-opted into my latest art project.

And, of course, it was. I mean, I was standing on a gravesite with amiraculously appearing collection of something I was obsessed by (thanksto my responsible father), yet the universe was telling me to be happywith what was in front of me right then, to let go. I even had an angelstanding over me with her wing extended, ready to wrap me in what singer-songwriterJohn Hiatt calls “her warmest coat.”

Click HERE for Meg’s Favorite Eggplant Parmigiana recipe.

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