For most, the anticipation of the fall season conjures up visions of orange pumpkins and all things pumpkin-flavored, but for our family, it’s beautiful, purple eggplants that come to mind. This is the season, usually in late September, when we prepare our pickled eggplant.
This family tradition goes back at least 80 years, when my mom recalls her Italian parents, my Memom and Pepop, making the eggplant. In their Neapolitan Italian dialect, they called eggplant mulignane. With a few gaps here and there, and several changes of venues, we have continued the tradition of making the pickled eggplant. Though the process has evolved a bit, and my cousins, my mom, now 93, and I have been the primary picklers in recent years, the end product is the same delicious eggplant delicacy.
Procuring all of the produce and ingredients for our pickling project is the first step. Of course we need quite a few eggplants. In recent years we’ve used about 20. Several years ago, I stopped at the produce market and they did not have enough eggplant, so I went out to the field with the farmer on his tractor and helped pick the eggplants. That was memorable.
We also either purchase or pick a variety of peppers: red and green bells, long hots and jalapenos. While peppers are not the main ingredient, they add nice flavor and color to our eggplant concoction. This year, we picked some of the peppers from my daughter’s and her father-in-law’s gardens, which makes this batch even more special.
We use non-iodized salt, which for any picklers out there, you know is essential because iodine will turn your veggies an unappetizing dark color. Garlic and oregano provide additional flavor to the eggplant. And we need vinegar, of course, as that is what actually does the pickling.
Once we have all of our ingredients, we need to peel and slice the eggplant and cut up the peppers. Back in my grandparents’ day, they did all of the slicing by hand, which was quite time-consuming. My mom recalls my grandfather being very particular about the thickness and shape of the eggplant – long thin strips, but not too thin. Now we use a slicing machine for the eggplant and a food processor for the peppers, which greatly expedites the process.
We also use jarred minced garlic to save time. My grandfather probably would not approve of this.
Dennis Grimmett mans the slicer.
Next, we layer all of the ingredients in large stoneware crocks. We must adhere to a specific order: two layers of eggplant, a few of each type of pepper, a generous sprinkling of salt, a spoonful of chopped garlic, and a pinch of oregano. We add layer on top of layer, until we reach close to the top of the crock. Then, we lay a plexiglass cover on the top inside of the crock. Pepop used a piece of wood, but the plastic is more sanitary.
Lastly, we add a heavy weight on top, to press down the ingredients. This is the most nostalgic part of the process, as the weights are the same ones my grandparents used over 80 years ago. My grandfather was a shoemaker, so he had large jugs of small shoe nails for weights.
The pickling preparation is now almost complete. The weight on top of each crock forces the water from the eggplant to rise to the top of the crock. For the next couple days, we pour off the excess water, then we add vinegar to the crock, making sure that the vinegar covers the top layer. We store the crocks in plastic bins in the garage for the next couple months and patiently wait for the pickling to happen.
Finally, on Thanksgiving, we unveil the eggplant and serve it with antipasto at our family dinner. We anxiously await the verdict from my mom as to how it turned out, as she has the historical knowledge and is the best judge. Fortunately, in all of the many years I have been involved in the process, we had only two years when the pickled eggplant was not optimal, which isn’t a bad record.
Besides the fact that our family really loves our pickled eggplant, it’s continuing the tradition that makes it all the more special. I think that Memom and Pepop would be happy that we are still making pickled eggplant. I know we are.
By the way, if you were wondering how many eggplants there are in a “peck,” I will save you the Google search. A peck is one-quarter of a bushel, and that would be about 10 medium eggplants, so we actually make about two pecks of pickled eggplant.
Linda Lucia Hochuli lives in Surf City, as do her co-picklers: her mother, Helen Lucia, cousin Patti Grimmett and her husband, Dennis Grimmett.
