Vegetable cookery on Ikaria, as throughout the greek countryside, is really varied. This recipes is an old one, which I wrote down while sitting with Myrsina Rousso, 80 or so, in her garden in Manganiti while she recounted numerous recipes and details about the life and food on the island in the 1940s. It’s a simple and filling dish: whole eggplants dipped in batter and pan-fried, then served with a garlicky tomato sauce. The frying might seem counter-intuitive when it comes to discussions of healthy vegetable recipes, but in Greece home cooks pan-fry many vegetables in olive oil, a tradition that stems from the days when in-house ovens were not part of the general kitchen panoply. For me, the real gift of this dish is that it has taught my children to love eggplants, an otherwise difficult vegetable for a teenage palate.