I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

So the bounty of the CSA continues to provide - in this case, eggplant - or aubergine as I suppose I must learn to call it. Eggplant can be a bit persnickety. Cook it too long and it dissolves into mush, roast it dry and it can sometimes get a strange texture, fry it and it can suck up enormous quantities of oil. Often I'll punt to a pasta sauce or ratatouille sort of treatment where a soft texture isn't a problem, but sometimes I take the bull by the horns, metaphorically speaking, and attack the problem head on. With suet.

The suet, I should note, is serendipitous. Given my impending move across a rather large ocean, I'm using up odds and ends from the fridge and freezer. I had some suet in there, for reasons which escape me - I'm usually more of a lard man - and decided to use it up. All that's really needed is some sort of lipid in which to fry up the eggplant.

In any case, these aren't battered exactly, rather they're breaded or crusted. My inspiration, vague as it was, was more of the fried green tomato vibe than a serious fritter, hence "frittoid."

• one eggplant
• one egg
• some cooking fat
• cornmeal
• salt
• pepper
• cumin

Beat your egg lightly with a bit of water. Mix cornmeal, salt, pepper and cumin in pleasing proportions. I went with something like 1/3 - 1/2 cup cornmeal and 1 Tbs each of the other three. But I'm a spicing rebel, me.

Heat the oil good and hot, then dip each slice in the egg, then in the breading/encrusting mixture. Fry for just a minute or so on each side and serve somewhere between hot and warm.

The breading and the hot oil keep the eggplant from soaking up too much oil, although it will soak up some, so choose your lipid carefully. We had though this would be an appetizer, but after we ate it, we realized that it had filled us right up, so we moved straight to dessert and saved the pasta for another day.