Don't Sweat the Aubergine

this is quite hard work. The mixture does not go stiff, but it does, eventually, thicken.
    Pour the mixture over the biscuit base in the tin or dish. Cover the dish with foil, tented at the top so that it does not stick to the filling, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight. Release from the tin, if using.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
    Top three
    For the cooking we do every day, recipes are less useful than is a set of principles, techniques and templates, from which we can create our own recipes. Here are the three books that are the best I know at inspiring that improvisational confidence.
    Simple French Food
by Richard Olney (Grub Street). ‘It ought to be called Incredibly Complicated French Food,’ someone once said to me. ‘Simple’, in this context, does not mean ‘basic’, but indicates that Olney is dealing with regional cooking rather than with high gastronomy. Actually, there are plenty of recipes here that are far from complicated; but only the most dedicated reader is likely to follow Olney every step of the way in his ‘Sauté-type’ stew, or in his fish terrine with whipped tomato cream. The real genius of
Simple French Food
, though, is in the prose. Olney, who died in 1999, was an American who lived in France, and he wrote with a patrician fastidiousness reminiscent of another American expat, Henry James.
Simple French Food
is about the principles and, it is not going too far to say, philosophy underlying the preparation of classic dishes. ‘By knowing and accepting rules, one frees oneself of rules,’ he summarized. Even if you never cook a recipe from this book, you’ll find it a revelation.
    Real Fast Food
by Nigel Slater (Penguin). What Olney does for classic French cuisine, Slater does, in an appropriately chattier style, for the kind of cooking most of us do after a trip to the deli and a raid on the store cupboard. Again, it’s not the recipes that make this book stand out, although they are worth more than the cover price, but the emphasis on improvisation. That is the guiding principle of all Slater’s books, particularly
Appetite
(Fourth Estate), with its series of recipe templates.
    McGee on Food and Cooking
by Harold McGee (Hodder & Stoughton). This is an 850-page book on the science, history and culture of the kitchen. Don’t be daunted: Harold McGee is a most engaging, companionable guide to these topics. After reading him, you’ll know why a sauce thickens, what happens when you make a mayonnaise, how vegetables lose colour, whether flash-frying seals meat. It will put you in a better position to assess the recipes of others; and it will give you confidence to adopt your own techniques, based on the soundest principles.
    Some more books I like:
    The Pedant in the Kitchen
by Julian Barnes (Atlantic)
    The Science of Cooking
by Peter Barham (Springer) – aimed at schoolchildren, but of interest to anyone
    Classic Turkish Cookery
by Ghillie and Jonathan Basan (I B Tauris)
    The Gastronomy of Italy
by Anna del Conte (Pavilion)
    Four Seasons Cookery Book
by Margaret Costa (Grub Street)
    French Provincial Cooking
by Elizabeth David (Penguin)
    The Perfect
… by Richard Ehrlich (Grub Street)
    The River Cottage Meat Book
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Hodder & Stoughton)
    Classic Cheese Cookery
by Peter Graham (Grub Street)
    Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book
(Penguin)
    Marcella’s Kitchen
by Marcella Hazan (Macmillan)
    Nose to Tail Eating
by Fergus Henderson (Bloomsbury)
    How To Cook Better
by Shaun Hill (Mitchell Beazley)
    Geraldine Holt’s Cakes
(Prospect Books)
    Curry Easy
by Madhur Jaffrey (Ebury)
    How To Eat
by Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus)
    Keep It Simple
by Alastair Little and Richard Whittington (Conran Octopus – but out of print)
    Made in Italy
by Giorgio Locatelli (Fourth Estate)
    The Rice Book
by Sri Owen (Frances Lincoln)
    The Food of Italy
by Claudia Roden (Vintage)
    Sauces
by Michel Roux (Quadrille)
    How To Cook
by Delia Smith (3 volumes, BBC)
    The Man Who Ate Everything
by Jeffrey Steingarten (Headline)
    The Cook’s Encyclopaedia
by Tom Stobart (Grub Street)
    Home Cooking
by Richard Whittington (Cassell)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    Emma Hayes of the Food Standards Agency answered all my queries informatively, and with patience. Darren Chant of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council also gave me useful advice on food safety. Claire Domoney of the John Innes Centre in Norwich furthered my understanding of the cooking of legumes, as did Geoffrey Kite at Kew.
    I’d like to