Wednesday 21 September 2011

eggplant salad

emilly made an eggplant salad as her savoury contribution to the planet vegmel picnic. it was super tasty, and filled the house with the smell of eggplant that was a) delicious and b) not cooked by me, which i like (cooking eggplant makes me nervous). she is not really a food blogger, so i have volunteered to blog the recipe on her behalf!

eggplant salad by emilly


eggplant salad

this is a little bit inspired by greg + lucy malouf's soused zucchini recipe, so you could probably make this a zucchini salad, if you were that kind of person (i am not. well, not in salad).

ingredients
1 medium sized eggplant
lots and lots of salt
olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice (or red wine vinegar)
1 teaspoon castor sugar
2 teaspoons sumac (plus some extra, if you like)
fresh coriander and/or parsley

method
cut up the eggplant. thinnish slices is best but emilly did it in chunks, and was then cursing the chunks during the entire cooking process. put the eggplant into a colander with lots of salt on each surface; put a plate on the top and some cans to weigh it down and press the eggplant, and leave for at least half an hour.

rinse the eggplant off, pat it dry with a paper towel, and then get more paper towel ready so you can drain the eggplant. fry with what seems like a painful quantity of oil. if you sliced it, you could probably brush each side with some oil so that you don't end up using equal quantities of oil and eggplant, but it cooks nicer and faster with plenty of oil.

for the dressing, combine lemon juice, sugar and sumac. mix together the eggplant and the dressing. this can all go in the fridge if you have prepared it in advance! then when it is time to go to the picnic/serve the salad, add some chopped parsley and/or coriander and sprinkle it over the top!

9 comments:

leaf (the indolent cook) said...

It looks great! Thanks for sharing the recipe. :D

Cindy said...

This was so delicious! I think I ate more than my share.

pfctdayelise said...

sumac! I haven't heard of that before. I will have to find some. this was so delicious.

steph said...

pfctdayelise, do you want some of mine? i have a packet way bigger than i can possibly use.

Elisa said...

Looks delicious. Think I might make it for lunch tomorrow.

Winston said...

hello, this recipe looks delicious! mind me asking where you got your sumac because i've never actually tasted/used them before. is there anything else you use it for besides grilled veg? this is really interesting! =)

pfctdayelise said...

OK so I was all bake-y today and I made this. Or tried to anyway. I think it is actually the first time I have bothered to salt eggplant. I think that worked OK (I was surprised at the amount of liquid that seeped out of it) but I don't think I rinsed my slices well enough, because they were still quite salty later on.

Also I think my slices were _too_ thin, because a bunch of them ended up basically as eggplant crisps. Oops.

I don't know if Emily made a double batch... I barely had a bowlful of salad by the time I was done (although I had to eat the crispy ones... of course).

anyway... progress :)

Elisa said...

I tried this salad on the weekend but without Sumac or salting the eggplant. Still delicious! Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Winston, I'm pretty sure my sumac came from coles! I sometimes use it if i make dukkah, to have with nice bread and olive oil. There's an article about it on taste.com.au

pfctdayelise, I did make two eggplants worth for the picnic, yes. (And actually they were pretty big eggplants too!) The original recipe suggested slicing it 1.5cm thin, but i would usually do it thinner than that - the crispy ones are delicious!