Tortang Talong: Eggplants roasting on an open fire...

Literally roasting aye?

As I was planning our wee household’s menu, I thought tortang talong (eggplant omelette) was a brilliant idea. It was easy, healthy, cheap and, of course, yummeh. Today, I proved that cooking tortang talong isn’t as easy as it seems to be…

I really thought that tortang talong only involved dunking the eggplants into egg and then frying the damn thing in the pan. And it turns out that I forgot one important part of the whole process: roasting / boiling the eggplants. Drat. You literally have to get your hands dirty here. See what I mean?

Getting down and dirty with the Tortang Talong

Ingredients:

Eggplants, the long thin kind. Well, you can buy the short and stout ones if you fancy that.
Uncooked scrambled eggs
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional: ground pork or, in my case, corned beef

Step-by-step:

Roast / boil the eggplants whole with skin and all. The roasting / boiling should help peel off the eggplant skin easily. If roasting on an open fire (like I did), let the roasted eggplants steam for a while. I place them in a covered container to help the skin peel off easier. I’m not so sure how you do it if you boil it. Any ideas?
Then, peel off the skin of the eggplants! This is where your hands will get dirty!
Peeled off skin of an eggplant
Once you’ve removed all the skin, butterfly the eggplants and mash the innards to create an eggplant fan like so…
Naked eggplant fans
Then dunk the eggplants in the uncooked scrambled egg mixture. Make sure to season the eggs with a little salt and pepper to taste.
Eggplants in an egg bath. Get it?
Then fry the egg bathed eggplants in a pan. Each side will take 3-5 minutes, depending on the fatness of your eggplant fans. The fatter they are, the longer cooking time per side.
OPTIONAL: For those of you who would like to add some meat to the tortang talong, first, you have to make sure that the meat is precooked. I used corned beef, so I did not have to do any additional cooking step. I just spooned some corned beef on each eggplant and fried them away.
To enjoy, eat with some ketchup (This is perhaps the only time I prefer to use Banana Ketchup, but tomato ketchup would do) and lots of plain rice!

Tadah!

This ends the not-so-easy recipe of the humble tortang talong! A hand salute to those brave tortang talong cooks, who get their hands very dirty everyday