Bell Pepper and Eggplant Salad
This whole preserve rests on a play of textures: soft fried eggplant rounds, juicy rings of sweet pepper, and fresh tomato wedges stacked in tidy layers. Unlike the usual mashed “caviar” spread, the vegetables here keep their shape, so the jar looks handsome enough to pass as a holiday appetizer.
The move that ties it together: every vegetable is fried in one shared aromatic mixture of oil, vinegar, salt, and sugar, which then doubles as the pouring liquid. Nothing is wasted, and the flavors braid into a single whole. Fry the eggplant only to a light gold — overcooked rounds break apart during sterilizing. Cut them a generous inch thick (2 cm) so they hold up.
One garlic clove and 50 g of hot pepper give a moderate heat you can push higher if you like. If your eggplant tends bitter, salt the rounds and let them stand 15–20 minutes, then blot dry with a paper towel; the salt pulls the bitter juices out. Don’t shortchange the sterilizing either — the fresh tomatoes make this batch demanding, so hold the full 35 minutes.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 281 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the eggplant into rounds 2 cm thick and fry them in the mixture of oil, salt, vinegar, and sugar.
In that same mixture, fry the sweet pepper cut into rings.
Mince the garlic and hot pepper. Cut the tomatoes into wedges.
Pack the prepared items tightly in layers into glass jars and pour over a little of the same mixture the vegetables were fried in.
Cover with lids and sterilize for 35 minutes. Seal, then set upside down until cooled.
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