Melanzane al cioccolato (Chocolate Eggplant)

Frank12 August 2017Campania, dessert42 Comments

Chocolate Eggplant? It sounds like a culinary joke or some newfangled fusion dish. In reality, melanzane al cioccolato is a perfectly orthodox if unusual dish from Campania, more specifically the Amalfi coast, traditionally made for the Ferragosto holiday on August 15.

I have to admit, although I had heard of this dessert for years, I had my trepidations, and so might you. We are so used to thinking of eggplant as a vegetable that an eggplant dessert seems like an oxymoron. But eggplant, like the tomato, is a fruit, so the idea of napping it in chocolate is not as strange as it might seem at first. So why not give it a go?

There are various ways to make this dish, but the basic recipe is constant: fried eggplant slices layered with chocolate sauce and sprinkled with nuts and candied fruits. The following recipe for melanzane al ciccolato is adapted from one in the iconic La cucina napoletana by Jeanne Caròla Francesconi. Her version caught my eye because, besides her stature as the doyenne of Neapolitan cookery, she made her melanzane al cioccolato the way Angelina made her parmigiana, dipping the eggplant slices in flour and egg before frying. But while Francesconi layers the eggplant slices in a baking dish as if she were making a savory parmigiana—the dish is also goes by the moniker parmigiana di melanzane al cioccolato—I prefer to make individual portions. The silky, mohogany-colored sauce, speckled with almonds or pine nuts, looks quite elegant napped over the golden brown rounds of eggplant.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

1 large eggplant (about 600g/1-1/4 lb)
Flour
3 eggs, beaten
Oil for frying

For sprinkling on the eggplant slices:

200g/1 cup sugar
Ground cinnamon, to taste
Zest of one lemon, grated

For the chocolate sauce:

75g (2-1/2 oz) unsweetened cocoa
100g (3-1/2 oz) sugar
750ml (2-1/2 cups) of milk

For the filling and topping, a total of about 150g (5 oz) of the following in roughly equal proportions:

Almonds, slivered or sliced or ground, blanched or not
Pinoli nuts
Bittersweet chocolate, cut into small bits
Candied orange and/or lemon peel and/or cherries, cut into bits (optional)

Directions

Prep and fry the eggplant: Trim off the ends and peel the eggplant, then slice it thinly. [If making individual portions, cut them into rounds. If you want to make a single dish, cut them lengthwise.]

Fry the eggplant slices in batches in hot oil for just a minute or two on each side, until soft, taking care that they do not color. As they are done, lay them on paper towels to absorb the excess oil. When they have all cooled off entirely, dip each slice in flour, then in beaten egg, then fry them in the oil again, until golden brown. Once again, lay them out on paper towels or a baking rack to drain.

While the eggplant slices are still warm, sprinkle them generously with a mixture of sugar, ground cinnamon and grated lemon zest.

Make the chocolate sauce: In a saucepan, whisk together the cocoa, sugar and milk until smooth. Bring the mixture to the barest boil and let it simmer gently for a good 15-20 minutes, stirring from time to time, until the sauce is a dark brown and thick enough to coat a spoon.

Prep the filling: While the sauce is simmering, mix together all the filling ingredients in a bowl.

Assemble: When the sauce is ready, ladle a bit of the chocolate sauce on the bottom of individual serving plates. Lay a slice of fried eggplant on top. Sprinkle generously with the filling, then ladle of some of the chocolate sauce. Repeat with a second and, if you like, a third slice. Top the last slice with sauce and then more of the fruits and nuts mixture or, for a more uniform appearance, just the almonds or pinoli. [NB: In the alternative, you can also assemble this dish in a large baking dish by layering the eggplant slices in rows, as if you were making a savory parmigiana.]

Rest: Let your Chocolate Eggplant rest until it is fully cooled before serving. It can also be served one or more days after you make it.

Notes on Chocolate Eggplant

Frying the eggplants twice may seem like overkill, but it’s a wise precaution against undercooking. A bit like French fries, the first frying serves just to soften the slices on the inside. The second frying produces the beautiful, crispy crust. Francesconi, like many other recipes, call for purging the eggplants under salt, but I find the fainty saltiness that lingers no matter how well you might try to rinse and dry the eggplant—off-putting. Anyway, these days eggplants rarely need it. Francesconi has you cut the eggplants lengthwise, but since I wanted to make individual portions, I cut them into rounds as you see in the photos.

Francesconi also tells you to wait four or five days before eating the dish. I tried eating it as soon as it cooled, after a day, two days… up to five days. Yes, it changed over time, with the eggplant and chocolate melding more each day, but I rather liked it at each stage of the process, perhaps even better eaten right away or the day after than after several days.

As for the filling, most recipes including Francesconi’s call for candied orange and/or citron. They are awfully hard to find these days here in the US. Perhaps you will have some luck in Italian neighborhoods. Otherwise, it is not terribly hard to make candied orange peel yourself, or you can purchase if online. Or you can simply do without. Or you could try some of the more common candied fruits that you can find easily, like cherries. Or—if you’re feeling adventurous—you might try substituting one of the many dried fruits and nut combination ‘trail mixes’ that you find in upscale supermarkets like Whole Foods for the filling and topping. It’s not traditional, of course, but it might actually work…

Variations

Most recipes for Chocolate Eggplant I’ve seen don’t call for coating the eggplant slices in flour and egg, but simply frying them as is. As with a savory Eggplant Parmesan, the result is a bit lighter but, to my mind, less interesting.

Some recipes call for making the chocolate sauce with simple syrup rather than milk, into which you whisk cocoa and sometimes bits of bittersweet chocolate to intensify the chocolate flavor. Personally I find it a bit too sweet for my taste. Some recipes call for condensed milk rather than regular milk, in which case you should need less added sugar. Liqueur is sometimes added, too. In many recipes, the assembled dish is baked in a low oven for a few minutes, just long enough to help meld the flavors.

The nuts are generally almonds, most often blanched—although personally I prefer the slight bitterness of almonds with their skins left on— and sometimes left whole. Pine nuts are not uncommon, either, and I’ve seen some recipes with pistachio or walnuts, too. Francesconi and some others add some crumbled amaretti to their filling.

Origins

The origins of Chocolate Eggplant are a matter of some debate. Some say the sisters of the order Agostiniane di Santa Maria della Misericordia invented the dish. These prolific cooks are said to have come up with other famous Campanian desserts, including struffoli and mostaccioli. Others attribute the dish to local Franciscan monks at a monastery in Tramonti, still others maintain that it was brought to Italy by invading Saracens. The dish gained international celebrity when a visiting nephew of Tsar Nicholas II sampled it at the Grand Hotel Cocumella. It was after that the local bakeries took up the recipe for the general public.

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