Aubergine

[koganbot]

Greek Eggplant Salad

This is my variation on a recipe that was in Jane Brody's Good Food Book:

SALAD
1 medium eggplant (about 1 pound)
1 large tomato, peeled and chopped (or several medium tomatoes from a can, chopped)
1 red pepper (or 1 pepper's worth from a jar of roasted red peppers)
1 or 2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped

DRESSING
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2½ tablespoons vinegar (wine vinegar or rice vinegar is best)
3 tablespoons olive oil

Minced fresh parsley for garnish

1. Stab the eggplant with a knife or fork in several places so that it doesn't explode when cooking. Place it on a baking sheet or in a large baking dish. If you're using a fresh red pepper, don't stab it, but place it on its own baking sheet or in its own dish. The sheets/dishes need to be large enough so that you can roll the eggplant and the pepper over while they're cooking. Heat the oven to 400-450 degrees [EDIT: Fahrenheit, that is]. Roast the eggplant - and the red pepper, if you're not using one from a jar - in the oven until the eggplant is soft and squishy and the red pepper's skin is bulging, can be a little charred in places. Turn them fairly often so that they cook evenly.
2. In the meantime, heat a tablespoon or two of cooking oil (preferably olive) in a frying pan and sauté the onion and garlic on low heat until they are nice and soft.
3. After the eggplant and the red pepper cool a bit, scoop out the eggplant pulp, discarding the skin, and then chop up the pulp. Peel the skin off the red pepper (it will come off easily if you've cooked it long enough). Break it open carefully so the seeds don't scatter throughout the interior and become a pain to retrieve. Remove and discard the seeds, and chop up the pepper. Retrieve as much of the juices from the eggplant and pepper as you can.
4. In a medium bowl, mix together the eggplant, tomato, red pepper, onion, and garlic.
5. In a small bowl, combine all the dressing ingredients. Pour the dressing over the eggplant mixture, combining them thoroughly. Chill the salad well.
6. Serve the salad sprinkled with parsley.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

do you chop the ends off the aubergine?

(i've always roasted peppers the other way round -- ie slice em open and removes seeds before cookin em: i shall try it this way)

[koganbot]

I chop the end off after roasting it; that way I can scoop out and use whatever scraps of cooked aubergine pulp are left in the end.

The reason I don't remove the seeds from the pepper before cooking (which is easier) is that if I slice the pepper open first, most of the pepper juice will then cook away, whereas if I roast the pepper whole, I'll retain a lot of the juice - unless the pepper splits open in the cooking (which sometimes happens).

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

what i generally do is slice the end with the stalk off, clean it out, then roast it standing so this end is down flat in the dish (or flat in a silverfoil "lid"* -- some juice runs out, but it is still largely contained within the pepperspace so it doesn't get lost

i am going to try it this way tonight -- i am interested to see whether this really makes the skin easier to remove (i hate doing this, it is so fiddly, and when i'm cooking for myself generally leave it on)

*(it's a "lid" for the underneath, if you see what i mean)

[koganbot]

Note the "EDIT" I put into the recipe, specifying that 400 to 450 degrees referred to degrees Fahrenheit. I assume you figured that out, since you didn't ask me why my recipe required us to throw the eggplant and the red pepper into the mouth of an active volcano.