Eggplant Omelet aka Tortang Talong the Way My Lola Made It

by Kay Ulanday Barrett
 

Hello, I’m feeling hopeless. I can’t write poems. Instead, I’m trying to cook food that feels safe and reminds me of home. I’m Filipinx and my lola/grandma used to make charred eggplant omelets! Almost every weekend morning before Saturday cartoons as I was still in my baggy pajamas, my lola would be bustling away. I could hear her clanging pans, chopping any assemblage of vegetables, lifting metal pot lids for breakfast. Usually on the table would be: tomato and onion scrambled eggs, tortang talong, dilis (fried anchovy) or longanisa (sweet breakfast sausage). All of this served with garlic fried rice, chopped fresh cucumbers with tomato, green mango, and onions in patis (fish sauce) or suka (rice vinegar). Here’s my version of tortang talong with fried garlic and homemade chili oil. ‬ I am romantic like most migrants’ children with a loyal and purist heart and the best of intentions: it’s not as good as what my lola made. But in these times this dish helps me picture my mama and lola in a wordless choreography in the kitchen. This comfort along with the smells of tortang talong will have to do.

My relationship to earth came from my lola. In a catastrophe like this pandemic, I especially long for what her winsome kitchen skills can do upon short notice.  A majority of the fruits and veg I likely snacked on, whether a thick carrot stick or thinly precise-sliced celery in soups, came from her garden until I went to college. Frequently no matter the weather, she summoned me to be her co-collaborator. She’d let me pick what to eat: potatoes softened in stews, onions and peppers whose mesmerizing scent would fill the whole house, chili peppers plucked for seasoning vinegar to lend acid to rich meats and decadent fish, cherry tomatoes squeezed between fingers, various greens with thick spines gentled eventually with vinegar. I was given this crucial assignment to choose components that my whole family would eventually laud over, stir up, and heap in steaming bowls. If our meals were a mix tape, my lola was the producer and I was humbly honored to sample some beats from her own backyard.

One of my obvious and favorite choices is the Chinese eggplant also known as talong in Tagalog.  Way before it became the sensual and incendiary sexual emoji for millennial text chats, the eggplant was a durable sturdy thing that could be flavored by whatever shared space with them. There’s a generous spirit to the eggplant if we consider how they sponge up any essence we dream up. Eggplant isn’t finicky so much as it’s a fluid fruit that can lean savory in curries to plump flesh in piquant thick tamarind broths. The seed layout of eggplant makes it very much fruit, but this sumptuous guy isn’t built for baked goods. It flips the script. It defies and delights our essential definitions of what a fruit is altogether. I love this fruit’s flagrant durability to be a dip at the hip potluck that drapes over a pita slice in pre-Covid yesteryear or in this case, an omelet. The eggplant, the unexpected fruit who plays a gallant harmony with alliums like garlic and onions, deserves its own applause. I would pick them fresh from our garden for a household of ten plus. When I was in grade school, I didn’t fully grasp the charm of them and yet, I would manage to grab six to eight eggplants that would eventually rally at an open flame until their purple skin went rippled and slack. 

Both eggplant and my lola taught me the simplest ways of transformation, how it comes from the roots, from the ground up. She taught me we could feed ourselves. Sometimes, lola would take fresh succulent blue crab meat and mix it in her version from leftover crabs via the generous dinner before.  Don’t just use the white meat as the dark butter found in crab shells adds a luxurious umami to the eggs that makes you feel like a magnificent emperor (without the feudalism and corruption). I’m without that savory buttery element due to the pandemic, but this food feels comforting right now just the same. It’s smoky, creamy, tasty, and I could really eat  three or four of them in one sitting without a single regret. 

The trick is to get great caramelization by sautéing the garlic and onions for a moment before adding the eggplant and the scrambled eggs. Plus, your kitchen will smell fabulous. You can get these skinny eggplants at any Asian and South Asian market. You can also use thick rotund magnate Italian eggplants, but broil those babies to the near consistency of what you would do for a babaganoush recipe and mash in the eggs. It’s a different vibe, thicker, and not as delicate and therefore, not as sweet. In Jersey City, I have the Fil-Am storefronts stocked with deep royal purple piles of five for $2. Around the corner, in India square there’s an Apna Bazaar just a few minutes away. You can see aunties taking whole bags along with heaps of okra. It’s an affordable meal for a couple bucks if you have the eggs already and refrigerator staples like soy sauce, onions, and garlic. The eggplant needs to be heavily charred so it’s supple enough to essentially have an egg bath. For vegetarians this is a creative breakfast or lunch option. For carnivores, you can add ground pork or supplement this dish with other proteins on the table. For me, I’ll likely eat four of them with my hands, each bite curated to garlicky rice as chili oil crunch swirls over the plate, every bite practically a toast to my lola. To the woman who taught me this recipe without any measurements whatsoever, who just as crucially taught me to care for and eat from the earth, to revel in this process without apology.
 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 large Asian eggplants (about 1/3 pound/155 g each)
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 1 small tomato
• 1 half small onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 dash of soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 2 tablespoons cooked crabmeat or sautéed ground pork (optional)
• 2 green onions for garnish
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar, for serving

 

TO MAKE

Preheat the broiler or if with a grill pan make sure flame is at medium.

1. Take a fork and poke holes on the eggplants after washing. This helps the eggplants roast through and through. Add a dollop of vegetable oil, enough to coat. 
2. On a baking sheet place eggplants and broil them, flipping once or twice, until they are soft and blackened on all sides, about 13-15 minutes. (For people who like direct char and have a gas stove, using tongs, hold the eggplants over a burner on medium-high heat. Keep rotating them so the skin blackens the entire fruit.)
3. Place the softened eggplants aside to cool 10 minutes to steam. Once only warm to the touch, peel the eggplants, discarding the skins.
4. Put the eggs in a shallow bowl. Beat well and season with salt and pepper and a small drip of soy sauce. Add the eggplants and use a fork to gently flatten the flesh. You want to get a fanned look, as though the eggplant plopped down, think like a paddle or a nopal shape. 
5. Finely chop onions, garlic clove, and tomato. In a large skillet, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat and add the trio to a warm pan, letting the sizzle smell woo you until the onions have softened. 
6. Take each eggplant in the beaten eggs, letting it soak so that it is well covered with the egg. Season the egg-dipped eggplant with additional salt and pepper and place it in the skillet. Do the same with the other eggplant, making sure there’s room between them in the skillet. Place 1 tablespoon of the crab or pork (if using) on top of each eggplant, pressing it down with a fork.
7. When the eggplants are crispy and browned on one side, about 3-4 minutes, flip them over and add a small knob of butter to cook until browned and crispy on the second side, about 3 minutes more. Transfer the eggplants to a paper towel–lined plate to drain.
8. Slice green onions on the bias and garnish on top of eggplants. Serve hot or at room temperature with ketchup, banana ketchup, or homemade chili oil crisp. This is usually made with fragrant garlic fried rice, dipped with some rice vinegar seasoned with chopped chilies or more tomatoes, onions, and garlic. 

 
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, and cultural strategist. Barrett’s book More Than Organs, received a 2021 Stonewall Book Honor Award by the American Library Association. Kay has featured at The Lincoln Center, The U.N., Symphony Space, The Poetry Project, Princeton University, NYU, The Dodge Poetry Foundation, The Hemispheric Institute, and Brooklyn Museum. They’ve received fellowship invitations from MacDowell, Lambda Literary, Drunken Boat, VONA, The Home School, VCCA, and Macondo. They are a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee and 2x Best of the Net nominee. Their political work includes serving on boards and committees for Res Artis, The Leeway Foundation, The Allied Media Conference, Transgender Law Center, and Crip Camp Documentary. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, The Advocate, Asian American Literary Review, Vogue, PBS News Hour, The Rumpus, Academy of American Poets, NYLON, WBAI Radio, NPR, and more. They have written two poetry books, When The Chant Comes (Topside Press, 2016) and More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020). They currently reside in Jersey City with their jowly dog.