Get your grill or a heavy cast-iron pan ripping hot — I mean smoking, heat you can feel from thirty centimetres away. Pierce each eggplant a few times with a knife so the steam has somewhere to go, then lay them straight onto the grates or into the pan without ceremony. You want aggressive, direct heat and you want the skin to blacken and blister all over — that takes 12 to 15 minutes total, turning every 3 minutes so every side gets its punishment. When you smell the char and the flesh gives softly under the tongs, you're there. Do not rush this. The smoke is not a side effect — it is the dish.

Pull the eggplants off the heat and let them rest on a plate for five minutes. Then peel the charred skin away with your fingers — it should come off in sheets, easy and satisfying. Once they're naked, move them to a cutting board and chop the flesh roughly. Torn and textured is what you want, not a smooth paste — this is a meze, not a baby food. Let any dark liquid run off before you carry on.

In a wide bowl, beat together cold yogurt with a generous squeeze of lemon and a good pinch of salt. Take two or three raw garlic cloves and press them with the back of a spoon until they break down into the yogurt — raw, sharp, uncooked, exactly as they should be. Now fold the warm eggplant through gently. You want the yogurt to stay white and creamy against the smoky flesh, not go grey. Taste it. More lemon? More salt? Fix it now, before anyone sees.

Spoon it into a shallow bowl — generous, slightly heaped, not fussed over. Puddle some olive oil across the top, dust it with red pepper powder for colour and a whisper of warmth, and tear a handful of flat-leaf parsley over the whole thing. Put it on the table with bread and olives and step back. This one takes care of itself.