#2 Neapolitan kitchen cosplay: pickled melanzane

On wanting to live in everyone else's kitchens + a recipe to make ur kitchen chic!

Ruby Tandoh says cooking is aspirational: you eat what you want to be. I know this acutely when I’m someplace new, seduced by the fantasy of returning home with a fresh weekly architecture for my kitchen (read: my life).

Because cuisines are delicate habitats - defined by the quiet things that are nevernot on the stove, in the cupboard, in the freezer - built by our quiet habits - they can take a life time to evolve - and I dream of inhabiting everyone elses…

I’ve picked up a little from my mum - a good freezer has spare butter and cubes of homemade pesto, and from dad - a good fridge has a box with a cheese assortment for after lunch. G always had tinned tuna. A needs spring onions. My last housemates and I had a ‘forever shopping list’: P- earl grey and peas; L- bread and feta; C- coffee and oat milk; E- eggs and tomatoes.

The best habitats hold a choreography, too: mum freezes the ends of dad’s cheese assortment and, when there are enough, turns them into the best cauliflower cheese; the chicken stock starts boiling once the last bones have been collected from the plates, and tomorrow is soup.

Snooping around salumerias in Naples (as we did whenever we saw one) is an excuse for some jealous Neapolitan Nonna kitchen cosplay: imagine a normal where you reliably reach for the nocerella olives, the marinated anchovies, the thinly sliced meats and cheeses… Where you stand with your basket as the man behind the counter feeds you this week’s mozzarella, but you shake your head - ‘Mamma mia Giovanni, who do you think I am? It’s not fresh!’…

One afternoon I emerged with a little tub of everything and two bright blue forks. Salame Napoli, fresh mozarella, marinated red peppers, two versions of zucchini, and some mysterious looking worms that he told me were melanzane, aubergine.

It was all delicious - the sort of thing I dream of living eternally in my fridge, especially this aubergine… I’d never come across pickled aubergine before and it was a bit of a revelation. Soon we started to notice that it punctuated most of the delis we walked past: Melanzane sott’olio.

We ranked our tubs: that was the best; that was perfect but not unusual; that’s the one I want to make at home.

So I did. I found this simple recipe online and mostly followed it….

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Melanzane sott’olio

You need: an aubergine*, salt, vinegar**, garlic, parsley, chilli flakes and olive oil

*I used just one aubergine because it was a bit of a tester. Can confirm it’s delicious so I’d recommend multiplying all quantities and making more!

**the recipe asked for white wine vinegar but I was too lazy to go to the shops so I used rice vinegar and that was fine

1. Peel the aubergine and cut it sideways as thinly as you can into sheets, then take a stack of those sheets at a time and cut them thin-as-you-can again lengthways to make long worms

2. Put the worms into a bowl with a couple of big pinches of salt and toss them with your hands so the salt’s all over (it’s going to help them dehydrate). Then cover it with a tea towel and leave it overnight on the counter

3. In the morning, they will be sitting in a puddle of their juices. Squeeze them to get as much out as you can, and drain the juice away. Patting and pressing with a tea towel also helps

4. Bring a couple of cups of water to boil with about a cup of vinegar

5. Add the squeezed out aubergine and boil for 10 minutes or until tender

6. When it’s tender, take it out of the water with a slotted spoon, let it cool, and then milk its juices again

7. While you are waiting for it to cool, mince a clove of garlic, a bunch of parsley and a pinch of chilli flakes together, pulling them over eachother with your knife as you chop to make a lovely herby almost-paste

8. Toss the cooled aubergine with these spices and then put it all into a jar. I sterilized my jar beforehand by just filling with boiling water (I didn’t worry too much because I knew we’d eat it quickly, but here’s a proper how-to).

9. Press your pickled aubergines down in the jar and cover them with olive oil, then put them in the fridge.

10. Wait about 12 hours before you eat

Here are mine:

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So for the last week, I’ve had a satisfying new kitchen habit. Melanzane sott’olio found its place:

• As a part of a plate of lunch that also included a piece of toast, some tinned sardines, a few tomatoes and a salad in a mustard-y lemon-y dressing

• As a ‘moist maker’ in sandwiches

• On a fork that moved between the jar, still in the fridge door, and my mouth

• And, most triumphantly, spread on top of feta spread on top of toast. Bellissimo!

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I’m one step closer to my fantasy kitchen habitat: a world full of little pots and jars with ready made mezze and pickles and goob; and with a satisfying choreography (lunchtime comes and the jars are opened and laid out and spread on toast with whatever other mess of leftovers and we exclaim when we’ve found the best combinations and everyone else tries it and ahhhs).

So there you go: a recipe to gild your kitchen for a week or three. And for a moment you can imagine that you just popped down to the salumeria for your weekly shop…

(If you haven’t read my last piece about eating food in Naples, you can find it here)