Eggplant Salad (Salata de vinete)

Have I got a treat for you! I mentioned before, I'm not crazy about eggplants, but this dish is one of my favorites, honestly.  I would say it's more of a spread than truly a salad, but you serve this salad on some nice crusty bread with some sliced tomatoes on the side, oh man, it doesn't get better than this.  It is the simplest recipe in the world, only 3 ingredients and it's just to die for.  I have grown up eating this salad, and it's probably one of the first things I ever learned how to make. So the 3 ingredients are:

  • 3 or 4 large eggplants
  • 1/4 cup of sunflower oil (do not use olive oil, doesn't taste good in this sald)
  • salt to taste
Now to prepare, is just as easy, you can either put these eggplants on a grill and make sure you cook them on all sides, or you can simply bake them in the oven at 375 degrees, so you could put them on a cookie sheet, poke some holes in the eggplants, this is a very important step, once I forgot to poke holes in the eggplants, and they literally exploded in my oven.  So just bake them in the oven, make sure they are baked really well, and you'll have to turn them from side to side.  Once they are done, let them cool off.

After they've cooled off, remove the peel, using a knife, if you've cooked them enough, the peel should come off easily.  You may wash them, to remove any of the dark peel, but make sure you use paper towels to soak up the excess water.  Place them in your food processor, add the salt, and turn it on, slowly adding the sunflower oil.  It should end up like a paste as you can see in the picture.  And that's it, if the salad is still a bit warm, just put it in the fridge and let it cool off, it's better cold.

You can serve them with nice crusty bread, toasted or not, and just some sliced tomatoes on the side, and you've got yourself a meal.

Now there are other variations of this salad, you could add mayo, or mustard, but I've tried it and this simple recipe is still my favorite version of it.

Enjoy!

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