Not only fish and seafood but also eggplants and other vegetables can be prepared this way!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 2 € pp)
- 1 kg small eggplants (better white)
- EV sunflower oil for frying
- 16 fresh garlic cloves or 8 dry garlic cloves, NOT peeled
- 200 ml EV olive oil
- 150 ml good quality white vinegar
- 1 peperoncino
- 1 bay leaf
- Fresh rosemary
- Smoked paprika
- Salt
Escabeche is a Catalan technique which helps us cook and preserve fish, seafood, vegetables or meat for up to 10 days. It is a similar technique to marinating. Its main difference is that the escabeche has precooking, cooking and preserving functions at the same time.
Having found some beautiful, small eggplants with thin skin as well as fresh garlic, I decided to prepare a “vegan” escabeche which is also very very tasty.
First of all we cut the eggplants in halves lenghtways, we salt them well and we put them on a sieve for an hour. After this procedure the eggplants will absorb less oil during frying. We pat them dry and we fry them at about 170 to 180 Celsius degrees.
Meanwhile we boil the garlic cloves till tender.
In another skillet we put together the olive oil and the vinegar and we bring to boil. We salt the liquid, we boil for 1-2 minutes and we check if salting is good. When ready, we add the eggplants, the garlic cloves, the paprika,the bay leaf and the rosemary, we lower the temperature and we let it be cooked for 2 minutes.
We let all things cool in the escabeche liquid and we put them in the refrigerator.
We wait 24 hours and we eat the eggplants garnishing them with rosemary flowers.
