Fun With Marinade

One reason eggplant is America’s favorite vegetable (I wish) is that it absorbs strong flavors like a sponge. This makes it particularly conducive to marinating. I’ve found that eggplant is delicious soaked in just about any sauce, dressing or brine: barbecue sauce, lemon mustard dressing, balsamic vinaigrette, Asian-style soy marinade, tzatziki, you name it. (Although... don’t name Hollandaise sauce. Or Thousand Island dressing. That just sounds gross.) Here’s a tip: rather than marinating eggplant while it’s raw and then cooking, as one does with meats, roast/grill/sauté the eggplant in oil first and then let it soak up the marinade afterwards. Otherwise, the raw eggplant becomes waterlogged and soggy, acquiring a weird rubbery consistency when cooked.

I recently made a batch of pico de gallo (a.k.a. fresh tomato salsa). This salsa has one major flaw: after only a day or so it turns into a few islands of tomato pulp surrounded by a sea of watery juice. This salsa-juice is very tasty -- like a strongly-seasoned gazpacho – but I usually end up just pouring it down the drain because it makes the chips/tortillas soggy.

And yet... there’s actually no need to waste such tasty saucejuice. Typically when I utilize this precious liquid, I pour it into a batch of chili. And the other day I thought... why not make it a marinade?

The day before I had bought these two pudgy heirloom eggplants from the farmer’s market.

 I cut them in thin slices, roasted them, and dumped them in the p.d.g. juice. There wasn’t quite enough marinade, so I doused them in hot sauce, as you see in the photo.

In the above photo, the eggplant rounds are perfectly formed and picturesque. By the next morning, they had soaked up the juice and looked somewhat vomitrocious:

... but tasted delicious. I made an open-faced sandwich with cream cheese, ajvar, pico de eggplant, and capers on top.

Isn't it odd how the eggplant looks like slimy cured meat?

I then ate less manicured versions of this combination for many subsequent lunches.

About ajvar: this Turkish spread contains eggplant, red peppers, and... other stuff, but mainly eggplant and red peppers. The inclusion of eggplant means that I should probably make it from scratch, but I’m in the habit of always having a jar of the storebought kind in the fridge. It works great as:

1) A bread/crackers spread to accompany any sort of mild cheese, like cream cheese or chevre or smoked mozzarella

2) Pasta sauce (no joke! I put it straight on my pasta)

3) An ingredient in tomato-based sauces and soups to make them taste richer

4) An addition to salad dressings

5) An addition to Asian sauces and marinades

6) So many things OMNOMNOM

Seriously, ajvar is that good.

Here is a sideways picture of ajvar that I can't seem to rotate because lately, when I rotate photos on my computer, the files mysteriously disappear. It's part of my tech curse, in which bizarre things go wrong with every piece of technology I touch.