Eggcellent Eggplant Salad

As I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of eggplant, although growing up it was a weird and exotic veggie.

In Israel, it is a common vegetable and often appears as part of a meal as one of many “salatim” or salads (or mezze) before the meal.

The problem with eggplants are that basically, they’re a sponge. If you sautee them in a pan, you will find yourself adding more and more oil since they soak up the oil and ultimately, you have a soggy bomb of dripping eggplant. Not the best thing to eat.

So, after much playing around, I’ve discovered my favorite way to prepare them that lightens up the salad and yet has the olive oil in it without drowning the mixture.

Try to find lighter weight eggplants, if you lift them up you can feel that some are denser and some lighter and that usually means less seeds and I’ve found less bitter.

So take your eggplant, and after chopping off their heads and tails, cut into thick rounds as below.

As you see, there is a some seed but not too much. This is an update, to prevent bitterness in your eggplant, I recommend salting them for about 20-30 minutes and leave salted. This draws out the bitterness. Then rinse and pat dry.

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees on bake. Then take a sheet pan, lay on a piece of parchment paper and arrange the rounds on the pan.

Take out a can of oil spray, if you have olive oil spray, great, if not, it’s fine to use regular vegetable oil spray since you will add olive oil at the end. Evenly spray the eggplant in a sweeping manner till it lightly glistens. If you use regular oil, you will see the oil marks exactly where you drizzle them, sucked into the eggplant like the sponge it is and you cannot spread it all over the round. (Trust me, I’ve tried). This is super annoying and again you’ll wind up using much more oil than you want. So, stick with oil spray.

Take the pan and put into the hot oven for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and using a spatula, flip over all the slices. Spray the lot again till lightly glistening. Put back into the oven for an additional 15 minutes and poke with a toothpick to make sure they are cooked through completely, if so, remove promptly. They should look like this

It’s okay if they are not all evenly browned as long as they are fully cooked through. They certainly should be if your oven really got to the hot temp of 425.

Now you start layering your ingredients into a bowl or container large enough to hold everything. Take some pickles in brine, about 6 nice sized ones

You can either slice up in chunks if you like a bold bite of pickle or you can chop fine, as you please. Then take some cherry or grape tomatoes, ( if you have none you can alternatively use regular tomatoes just chop into small chunks) but the small slices of cherry tomatoes are particularly pretty to the eye.

Aren’t they gorg? Slice into slices, medium ones are fine.

Take a small bunch of parsley and chop roughly. Take one or two cloves of garlic, smash with the flat of a knife, peel and thinly slice. Squeeze a teaspoon of lemon juice in and sautee 5 big mushrooms with half a small onion till lightly browned and throw into the mix. Add salt and olive oil and a little of the pickle juice and toss the whole thing together. The best is to let it sit at least an hour, although longer is better.

After letting it sit to absorb the flavors and liquids, test the taste of the eggplant salad and correct to taste with salt and if a little more pickle juice or olive oil is needed, add to taste. You will find that the eggplant salad is both flavorful and much lighter in taste due to the reduced amount of oil, even though you add oil after the baking of the eggplant. It becomes an addictive salad, colorful and tasty, good both during the week and a lovely Shabbat or Chag salad to complement the meal.

Eggcellent Eggplant Salad

2 firm purple eggplants, scrubbed and patted dry, cut into thick rounds

2 plump cloves of garlic, smashed with the flat of a knife, peeled and thinly sliced

small bunch of parsley, washed, dried and chopped roughly

small peeled, chopped onion

5 big (or 10 small) mushrooms, washed, patted dry and chopped

small slice of lemon, squeezed for about a teaspoon of lemon juice

pickles in brine, about 6 either chopped into chunks or chopped into finer smaller pieces, as you prefer, and some pickle juice

cherry or grape tomatoes, washed and sliced into medium slices OR one small tomato, washed, sliced and chopped

olive oil

olive oil spray or vegetable oil spray

salt

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 425 F/220 C degrees.

Take a sheet pan and put down a sheet of parchment paper. Take the washed, dried eggplant cut rounds and salt on both sides, leaving the salt to draw out the bitterness for 20-30 minutes and rinse and pat dry and put tightly next to each other to cover the sheet pan (see pic above). Take the oil spray and spray the eggplant in a sweeping motion till the eggplant glistens. Pop into the hot oven and time it for fifteen minutes. Remove from oven and flip to other side with spatula. Oil spray in sweeping motion on unbaked side till it too glistens. Pop back into oven and roast for an additional 15 or so minutes or until totally cooked (check with toothpick for doneness) and browned but not dark brown (or it gets a bitter flavor). Let cool.

Meanwhile, while cooling, take chopped onion and sautee in a tablespoon or two of oil till light brown and throw in chopped mushrooms and cook till just wilted a bit.

Take a big enough bowl to hold all the ingredients and start to layer the salad. Put in eggplant, chopped parsley, chopped pickles, sauteed onion and mushrooms, sliced garlic, lemon juice and sliced tomatoes. Toss well and add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil (preferably olive but if none, you can use mild veggie oil) a teaspoon of salt and some pickle juice both for flavor and additional liquid for dressing the salad. Toss, toss and toss again till the whole mixture is nicely coated with the pickle juice and oil. Taste just to see if you need some more oil or pickle juice and let rest for about an hour (or longer). While the eggplant will absorb some of the liquid, it will not be too much since it’s already cooked. Taste and adjust oil or pickle juice and salt if need be. It should be bold with flavor but lighter, and really delicious. Enjoy every bite!