Eggplant stuffed with tomatoes
Halve the eggplant and remove the insides as in the last recipe but one. Make a forcemeat of the eggplant pulp, a cupful of chopped ripe tomatoes, one chopped green pepper, and a cupful of bread-crumbs. Season with a tablespoonful of melted butter and salt and pepper. Fill the hollow sides with this mixture, bind the two halves together with wide tape, and bake, basting frequently with melted butter and hot water. When tender, transfer to a hot platter, cut and remove the tape, and pour hot tomato sauce about the eggplant.
Stewed eggplant, with sauce piquante
Prepare as for eggplant on the half-shell by halving and scooping out the pulp, leaving substantial walls. Chop the pulp and cover with hot water. Season with a tablespoonful of onion juice, salt and pepper, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Take from the fire, drain, turn into a bowl and work in two tablespoonfuls of soft bread-crumbs, one tablespoonful of finely-chopped capers, two tablespoonfuls of cold boiled tongue, minced, and, when well-mixed, add salt to taste.
Pack this forcemeat closely into each half, and fit the two parts together, binding securely together with tapes or soft twine.
Put into your covered roaster; pour enough weak stock around it to come one-third of the way up the side, bake, covered, half an hour, then turn and cook the other side. Undo the strings, lay the eggplant carefully in the middle of a hot dish, and pour a good sauce piquante over and around it.
HOMINY
The small-grained hominy, called at the South “samp,” after the manner of the aborigines who bequeathed it to us, must be used in the recipes which follow.
Plain hominy pudding
Soak a cupful of hominy for three hours in tepid water. Drain, and put over the fire in plenty of boiling water, slightly salted. Boil fast for thirty minutes or until tender; turn off the water and pour in a pint of hot milk, with a little salt. Cook for fifteen minutes, stir in a generous lump of butter and turn into a deep dish.