Grilled Eggplant Salad with Garlic and Saffron Mayonnaise

Nice, but with several mistakes. First, he mentions that the aubergines should preferably be small aubergines “ he doesn’t mention that the recipe won’t work properly if they’re not. He instructs you cut the aubergines crosswise (but not completely), fill it with mayonnaise-dressing and then grill them on both sides until the skin is black. Apparently, he supposes that the aubergines will be cooked by now, but that’s not the case if you use normal aubergines. If you do, I’d probably grill them first to be able to skin them, then slice them and think of some way how to grill the slices with the mayonnaise on top of them, or make a lengthwise (?) cut to fill the aubergine slices with mayonnaise.

Second, I always learned that you’re supposed to soak saffron in a bit of hot water before use (and use the water too). Bitmann doesn’t suggest that and seems to think the saffron would dissolve in the mayonnaise. They didn't completely, nor did we actually taste any saffron (but then again perhaps we didn't use enough?)

I was at Ottolenghi’s in London last week and had ‘Roasted aubergine and red pepper with saffron yoghurt, coriander, preserved lemons and almonds’ (amongst others), which was infinitely better. Does anyone know if that one’s been published in the Ottolenghi cookbook?

This recipe produced one of the most visually unappealing dishes I have ever created: tan-brown chunks of eggplant dolloped with tan-yellow saffron mayonnaise.

The salad tasted okay -- as do most things involving garlic and mayonnaise, in my opinion. If I were to make it again, I'd probably grill slices of eggplant and keep the skin on rather than, as Bittman suggests, splitting the eggplant lengthwise, cooking them and then peeling and chopping them.

Given that there are so many other tasty way to cook eggplant, though, I don't think I'll bother with this recipe again.