Melanzane al Forno con Origano

The South of Italy knows eggplant as the North knows butter. From Sicily to Calabria to Campania, melanzane appears at nearly every table, cooked a dozen different ways. This is the simplest of them: slices roasted in a hot oven until golden and collapsed, seasoned with nothing but oregano and oil.

Americans want to bread it, fry it, cover it with cheese. They do not trust the vegetable to be enough. But when you roast eggplant properly, the flesh becomes silken, almost creamy, with a depth of flavor that needs no embellishment. The high heat caramelizes the natural sugars. The oregano provides its distinctive Southern perfume. The olive oil binds everything together.

Dried oregano, not fresh. This surprises people, but dried oregano has a concentrated intensity that fresh cannot match. The Southern Italian kitchen understood this long before anyone theorized about it. What you keep out is as significant as what you put in.