Roasted Eggplant Spread

Indigenous Peoples' Day weekend. Anchorage held a celebration downtown — drumming, dance, a salmon bake at the Native Heritage Center. I went on Saturday. The salmon was wild king, smoked, the kind of thing that makes you reconsider every other salmon you have eaten. I sat at a long table next to an Iñupiaq elder named Aana who told me she had been a public health nurse on the North Slope for thirty-eight years and was now retired and writing her memoirs. I asked her if she had advice. She said, "Write the truth. They will tell you to soften it. Don't." I wrote that down on a napkin. The napkin is on my refrigerator.

I asked Aana about the difference between Iñupiaq and Yup'ik and Athabascan cooking — the way the cooking maps onto the land. She talked for an hour. I listened. I asked if I could write about her on the blog. She said yes. She said, "Tell our food right. Most people get it wrong." I promised.

I went home and started a blog post about Aana, about the food sovereignty movement she had described, about the way every immigrant kitchen in Alaska sits on Native land and owes a permanent debt to the people who fed themselves here for ten thousand years before the first ship arrived. I sent her the draft for review. She edited it gently. She added two paragraphs in her own voice. The post went up Friday. It became the most-shared post I have written in a year. Aana sent me a single text: "Good." That was the praise.

I made salmon sinigang on Sunday — Reynaldo's recipe. I added a small note in my recipe journal: "We did not invent this dish. We placed it here. Our part is the tamarind. Our part is the squeeze. Our part is small. Our part is honest." I keep the journal. The journal is where I am most myself.

After the salmon sinigang was gone and Aana’s text was still sitting on my phone like a small warm stone, I found myself in the kitchen again the following evening — not ready to cook anything with that much weight behind it, needing something quieter. This roasted eggplant spread is what I make when I want to stay close to the fire without declaring anything. Eggplant is a vegetable that knows how to yield; you char it until the inside goes soft and honest, and then you coax it open. That felt right. That felt like the week.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 large eggplants (about 2 lbs total)
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Warm flatbread or sliced vegetables, for serving

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 425°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Pierce each eggplant several times with a fork so steam can escape during roasting.
Roast the eggplants and garlic. Place the whole eggplants on the prepared baking sheet. Nestle the unpeeled garlic cloves alongside them and drizzle everything with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, turning the eggplants once at the halfway point, until the skins are deeply charred and the flesh has completely collapsed and is very soft when pressed.
Cool and peel. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and let the eggplants and garlic cool until they are comfortable to handle, about 10 minutes. Slice each eggplant open lengthwise and scoop the soft flesh into a colander set over a bowl. Let it drain for 5 minutes to remove excess liquid. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins and add them to the drained eggplant.
Mix the spread. Transfer the eggplant and garlic to a medium bowl. Add the lemon juice, smoked paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Mash and stir with a fork until the mixture is mostly smooth but still has some texture — this is a spread, not a puree. Taste and adjust salt and lemon as needed.
Finish and serve. Spoon the spread onto a serving plate, use the back of a spoon to make a shallow well in the center, and drizzle with a little extra olive oil. Scatter the chopped parsley over the top. Serve warm or at room temperature with flatbread or sliced raw vegetables.

Nutrition (per serving)

Roasted Eggplant Spread — What We Place Here, What We Keep