Whenever we have a special occasion (or just crave it), we’ll prepare a tasty creamy eggplant salad from roasted aubergines (eggplants), onions and mayo. When living in New York City, we’d find this in some Polish or Russian stores as baba ganoush, we call it eggplant salad in Romania.
I’ll present you few options and hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.
Creamy Eggplant Salad Ingredients
- 2-3 big ripe eggplants (you can prepare more and then put the rest in the freezer for later)
- 1 big onion
- salt to taste
- homemade mayonnaise
How to Make Creamy Eggplant Salad the Romanian Way
I’m sure you can find the recipe in other countries as well, but, since it’s a Romanian staple for most events, let’s indulge my patriotism and call it Romanian 🙂
So, how do we cook it?
- PIERCE the eggplants with a fork then roast them on the grill. If ye’re not prickling them beforehand, they’ll explode and mess up your grill. Don’t blame me, if your burgers and steak will smell like burnt eggplant. Set the grill to medium, we don’t want to burn them too soon. Keep them for 30-40 minutes, until nicely burnt. Turn on all sides. The skin needs to be charred and the interior will be gorgeously cooked. You can cook them on the stove or in the oven, the grill is the best option though.
- Take them hot and cut them in half (lengthwise). Although super-hot, schoop the inside and put it in a collander to get the moisture out. DO NOT WAIT for them to cool, before doing this, they’ll not be as “white” and nice looking.
- Leave them to cool down a draw moisture out.
- In the meantime dice the onion in small bits.
- When the eggplants are not “runny” anymore, chop them and mix in the diced onions.
- Add mayo and salt.
Other options
- you can skip the mayo and keep the eggplant salad vegan. We usually put a little vinegar in it and some extra virgin olive oil.
- you can also add some crushed garlic cloves for some extra heat and taste.
When we stayed at our friends in NYC, we’d prepare 3 types of creamy eggplant salad: one with no mayonnaise, one with mayo and onions and one with garlic as well. All of them are super-tasty.
Enjoy 😉