Of Eggplant and Cookbookery

Laurie Colwin is one of my all-time favorite authors.  She is a food writer and novelist beloved by almost all who find themselves with her books in their hands.  Among her fans, a common sentiment is that reading her work is like spending time cozied around the kitchen table, sharing a pot of coffee and a plate of gingerbread with a warm, insightful, and funny true friend.

I first discovered Colwin through her novel Happy All The Time (a book rich in keen domestic and social detail — I’ve read it once a year for years now, I love it so much!).  Other folks find her via her two collections of wonderful food essays:  Home Cooking and More Home Cooking (the latter published posthumously, after her early death in the 1990s).  Even in the 1980s, Colwin was a strong advocate of local, organic foods and heirloom farmer’s market finds (like our eggplant, above).  She was ahead of her time!

One of the most well-known pieces in Home Cooking is “Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant,” an account of Colwin’s culinary pursuits in her first Greenwich Village apartment, which was 7 x 20 feet, with only a small counter, mini refrigerator, and two-burner hot plate for a kitchen.  It had no kitchen sink —  all dishes were done in the bathtub.  In this apartment, eggplant became Colwin’s go-to ingredient for whipping up A Dinner for One:

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook’s strongest ally.  I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold.  It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations.  If any was left over, I ate it cold the next day on bread.

Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures.  Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.  People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone.  A salad, they tell you.  But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

I think of this essay fondly every time I pick up an eggplant.  I imagine that, among her readers, this is not uncommon!

Every food subject Colwin chose — from flank steak to potato pancakes to homemade yogurt to chocolate cake — she wrote of with heart and wit and practicality.   There is, I think, no better description of the feelings Colwin’s cookbooks evoke in her readers than these words of her own, excerpted from More Home Cooking:

Cookbooks hit you where you live.  You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry, and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved.  That’s a big desire, and cookbooks say to the person who’s reading them, “If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others.  You will make everybody feel better.”

All these things, her cookbooks do.  So, go ahead.  Find yourself a copy, and welcome Colwin into your cooking life.  With her excellent company, you will never feel alone in the kitchen (with or without eggplant).  Guaranteed.