Marinated Eggplant Salad
1 large eggplant
1/2 c. white vinegar
3 c. water
1/4 t. black peppercorn
3-5 whole bay leaves
1/2 t. salt
2 t. sugar
1 handful fresh dill,
chopped or
2 t. dried dill
3/4 c. mayonnaise
Mix dill with mayonnaise; set aside. Cut eggplant into sticks about
finger-size, first cutting into slices. In a pot large enough to hold eggplant, make the marinade. Bring to a boil vinegar, water, spices, salt and sugar. Add eggplant. Marinade should cover eggplant. Do not stir. Cover and simmer until eggplant begins to look transparent. Turn into colander to drain and cool. Remove bay leaves; save. Do not remove peppercorns. When cool, using a wooden spoon, fold in mayonnaise. Decorate with bay leaves and enjoy.
How I learned to make MARINATED EGGPLANT SALAD, and a few other things...
The year was 1936; I was a fairly new arrival in Haifa, and had not yet learned to speak, read or write Hebrew. A young teenager, alone, and like so many other girls, I was staying temporarily at the Beth Hachalutzoth. I heard of a cookery course, and, perhaps rashly, registered as a student. Throughout the first day in class I sat there feeling what the builders of the Tower of Babel must have felt. The course was to last for three months, and the prospect of sitting through so much time in empty isolation was more than I could bear. I came to class armed with a thick wad of blank papers, and a lot of sharpened pencils, and hung on the teacher's lips for all my life was worth, taking down every sound she uttered. I understood nothing. The only alphabet I knew was the Roman alphabet and the sounds I took down were a phonetic representation of Hebrew in Roman letters.
Each evening I scoured the corridors of the Beth Hachalutzoth in search of some girl who was willing to work with me for an hour or two, and was usually lucky. I would slowly read to her the succession of sounds I had taken during class. The girl would extract from this medley the beginnings and ends of words as each became recognizable to her, until a sentence would begin to emerge. It was exciting to watch her face light up with recognition, and immediately she'd translate the Hebrew into German or Yiddish, whichever was functioning as the common language between us. At last I could fully understand what I had observed in class in the way of practical work.
I immediately began scribbling again, this time writing down the recipes we had prepared that morning, and all the instructions that went with them. Needless to say, I managed to acquire quite a bit of knowledge of Hebrew, and by the end of the course was able not only to pass the exams, but I had also compiled a cookbook in a language I could read. When I showed my cookbook to the teacher some months later, she politely admired it, but suggested that it might be a good idea if I were to translate it all into Hebrew, sothat she and others might be able to read and understand it too!
