Cooking eggplant over an open flame until it collapses into a silky, smoke-tinged heap is a tradition that dates back millennia and spans cuisines throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa—particularly Morocco, where zaalouk is everywhere.
To make the ubiquitous meze, Moroccan cooks slow-cook whole eggplant until the skin lightly chars and the flesh softens. Then they mash and sauté it with tomatoes; garlic; spices such as cumin, paprika, and cayenne; cilantro; lemon juice; and plenty of olive oil. The consistency of zaalouk—one of the world’s greatest expressions of
