Betty Lives!

Favor-Eats

A community cookbook by The Women’s Society of Christian Service, Vincent Methodist Church, Nutley, NJ

1965

One of my great passions is old community cookbooks.  I just love the way they look, the way the read, the way they reflect.  Unfortunately as far as cooking tools go though, they pretty much suck.  The beauty is the homespun quality, the downside is that recipe writing is a skill most people don’t have.  What I look to them for is ideas and new flavors.  Like this oddly named “Squash Pie” which does not contain any squash but, rather, eggplant.  A note here to say that if I were forced to become a vegetarian (through what would obviously be horrible and dire circumstances), I would live on eggplant.  I LOVE it.

In this “recipe” the eggplant is peeled, cubed and boiled in salted water.  Ugh.  Has anyone ever tried to boil eggplant? It’s like boiling a sponge.  The cubes float on top and I kept having to shove them into the water with a spoon.  Finally, I just covered the pot.  After the cubes are cooked they get processed with one chopped onion, three Tbl melted butter, salt, pepper, two eggs and five slices of toast that have been softened in a little milk.  I decided to cook the chopped onion and added a crushed clove of garlic in the pan.  I also drained the eggplant and dried it out in a hot oven.   The mixture is then poured into an oiled baking dish, sprinkled with two Tbl cream and baked for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.  During the last five minutes I used the broiler so the top would brown a little better.

The color was a little greenish:

The look improves when I plated it with my lamb chops and purple barley:

The texture was wonderful, but the taste was only eh.  I can’t explain why but it tasted a little fishy to me. I would definitely do this again because it was easy and different but next time I’m going to roast the eggplant and add more spices like cumin and coriander to give it some oomph.