Mirza Ghasemi (Smoked Aubergine Fried Down and Bound with Egg)

Variations

• Kadoo ghasemi: made with courgette instead of aubergine, and ko.wikipedia records the name. Courgette has no skin worth burning, so the smoke goes and what is left is the egg-and-oil half of the dish.
• Without the egg: leave it out and this is not mirza ghasemi but a northern charred-aubergine salad. The third tip below is about that difference.
• As a casserole: rather than folding it in the pan, the egg is poured over in a dish and set in the oven. It cuts more neatly and the oil sinks to the bottom.
• As a main: served with rice it stops being a starter. ko.wikipedia records both places.
• Without the char: 40 minutes at 200C softens the flesh but leaves no burnt skin. That is half the dish gone, and smoked paprika does not replace it.

Tips

• Baba ganoush has already written down why it is charred, and this page does not repeat it. Of the blackened skin that page says "it is thrown away entire — so the charring is not seasoning anything you eat." Step one here is exactly that, and the skin is thrown away exactly the same. What differs is what comes next.
• And what comes next is the dish: this aubergine goes back into oil. Maqluba writes down the fact the aubergine dishes leave out — once the cells have collapsed the flesh will "stop absorbing oil and start releasing it". Baba ganoush uses that to put its oil in last, saying "The aubergine has stopped being a sponge before it ever meets any." This dish uses the same fact the other way: because the flesh can no longer drink, it can be fried down in a generous amount of oil, and what is left in the pan is oil that nothing has absorbed.
• The egg is not there to be cooked; it is there to gather that free oil back up. Patatas bravas names the strongest one there is — "Mayonnaise brings egg yolk, the strongest emulsifier there is, so it cannot split" — but here the egg is not emulsifying a sauce — it sets in thin threads inside a thick purée and holds the oil in place. It is neither the emulsion of why sauces split nor the liaison of thickening: blanquette de veau keeps its yolk under 70C in a thin broth, while here whole egg goes into a stiff mixture at pan heat and setting is the point (cooking eggs).
• Which makes the last minute or two the whole dish. Fold once when the egg is half set and take the pan off. Keep stirring and the egg breaks into grains, lets go of the oil it was holding, and a ring of it appears round the edge of the plate.
• Drive the tomato's water off before the egg, not after. With water still in the pan the egg sets around water rather than oil and weeps as it cools. The oil coming back out in step five is the signal that the water has gone.
• Why the garlic is used twice. Half is cooked in the oil at the start for sweetness, half goes on top for aroma. Baba ganoush uses its garlic raw and warns that it sharpens as it sits; both lots here have been through oil, so that does not arise.
• Chop it with a knife, not a blender. Baba ganoush gives one reason — "what gives it body is the pieces that are left" — and there is a second one here: finely blended aubergine catches on the pan while it fries, and leaves no pieces for the egg to hold on to.