Roasted Eggplant Salad

Roasted Eggplant Salad

 

 When people see me buying eggplants at the supermarket, sometimes they ask "how do you cook them?, do you steam or stir fry?". Most Southern Californians' eggplant encounters are limited to Eggplant Parmesan and a few Chinese stir fry dishes with eggplant. Turks claim, however, that there are 41 different eggplant dishes in Turkish cuisine. I'm not sure if this is true, but I can think of at least a dozen great eggplant based dishes. I will start with one of my favorites, the roasted eggplant salad. I love the smokey taste of all vegetables roasted on barbecue. This recipe does not call for garlic, however, if you are a garlic lover, I suppose there's no harm in adding a couple of cloves of garlic to it. Enjoy!

 
Ingredients:

• 2 large eggplants
• 1 medium size red onion
• 8 cherry tomatoes
• ½ cup olive oil
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Salt to taste

Directions:

Wash and poke eggplants with a skewer on both sides a few times. This is to make sure it cooks well inside when you roast them. Place the eggplants on barbecue on medium heat. Roast them on all sides until the eggplant feels soft when you touch with a fork. Skin will look mostly brown, charred at places. Remove from heat, place them in a container, let them cool. Peel the skin put the eggplants in a container, pour half of the lemon juice over the eggplants to avoid darkening of color. 

Cut the onion in quarters lengthwise. Cut the pieces into thin slices. Cut tomatoes in half.
Drain eggplants. Cut eggplants into byte size pieces. Place them in container. Add onions, remaining lemon juice salt and olive oil. Gently stir with a spoon. Place in a serving dish. Garnish with tomato halves and basil or mint leaves.

Afiyet Olsun! Bon Appetit!