Time to share another delicious recipe!
Now this one takes a long time to prepare so it's likely going to be a weekend type of thing.
Some notes:
I am gonna give temps in centigrads, sorry. You'll have to ask google for the farenheit equivalents.
When I say tomatos, I mean something like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campari_tomato , you can substitute for a similar cultivar as long as it has similar characteristics.
Olive oil is used in these recipes and it shouldn't be substituted! On olive oil... Spain's the largest producer by far! We produce twice as much what Italy produces! Most of the "italian" olive oil you buy is spanish olive oil the italians buy in bulk, adulterate with cheaper oils or worse, then ship to the US with fancy italian labels. Skip the shady intermediaries and the adulteration, buy spanish olive oil!
Now, onto the recipe itself.
What you're gonna need:
Eggplant, red bell peppers, onions (the sweet ones), tomatos, garlic, olive oil, salt, bread.
Preheat your oven at 170C. On a temperature resistant recipient, add olive oil to create a thing film on the bottom. Throw in there the bell peppers, the onions, the eggplant and a full garlic head. Pour olive oil over the vegetables so that most of their surface has been exposed to the oil. Make some small incisions in the eggplant. Throw it into the oven.
Now on my oven this takes about an hour, but ovens are fiddly, so you'll have to experiment a little.
At this point, rotate the vegetables to ensure they cook evenly and add tomatoes (they cook faster that's why you add them later). Let it cook in the oven for another half an hour. You'll know they're cooked because the vegetables will be all wrinkly and will have lost a lot of volume.
Retire the vegetables from the oven and let them cool enough for you to handle. Now comes the tricky part, once they're cool enough, you have to remove the skin and the seeds. This takes time. Once done, cut the eggplant and the bell peppers into long slices a finger's width.
Throw into a dish, garnish with olive oil and a bit of vinegar (use clear vingear, not balsamic). Enjoy!
You can make this even more delicious by serving it with bread and tomato! To prepare proper bread and tomato, toast your bread so that it's firm but not brown burnt, ideally when you pass your finger over the bread surface it should feel rough. Cut a clove of garlilc in half and smear it on the bread, depending on taste lightly or heavily (you might need more than one clove if you're making several slices of bread). After that, cut a tomato in half and smear it over the bread, while you do so squish the tomato so the juices transfer to the bread. Garnish with salt and olive oil and it's ready! Traditionally what you bring to the table is the toasted bread and the ingredients (garlic, tomato, olive oil, salt), that way everyone can make the bread and tomato according to their own taste.
One note of this recipe: I have given you the oven method, but this meal reaches the next level when prepared as originally intended, over a fireplace or on a very hot iron skillet. That's because the red bell pepper and eggplant, onion and garlic skins are very hard so even if they burn they will protect the meat and the meat will acquire a smoky taste. I lack both means so I use the oven, which still makes this a delicious meal.
