Paraphrasing the well-known proverb “The poor and honey agarics - meat”, we can say that for the poor and eggplant - the liver. Moreover, the taste of this fruit from India is a bit like liver. It is only necessary to help the eggplant to turn into a delicious “liver” paste. This dish can be served as an independent cold appetizer, spread toasts and crackers with it. In the Middle East, they love mutabbal - an aperitif sauce, as well as babaganush, eggplant paste, which is often combined with tahini paste. In this article, we will provide several recipes for dishes that will help you replace the liver on your table and make the snack hearty and tasty. Below you will also read about how to prepare eggplant and liver paste for the winter.
Classic vegetarian recipe
Only vegetables will be used: eggplant, garlic, thyme. But what a “liver” it will turn out! This dish does not require any effort from the cook, especially when there is a food processor or blender at hand. First, preheat the oven to two hundred degrees. Cut the unpeeled eggplant along. Cover the oven grill with foil. We put eggplant on it with cuts down. On the blue side, make a knife with several oblique incisions. Insert small pieces of garlic and thyme into the resulting holes. Water the eggplant with a small amount of vegetable oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Bake until cooked. Large eggplants will take about an hour, small fruits will reach their condition in thirty minutes. We take out, cool a little. Spoon out the pulp and transfer it to the blender bowl. Add a coffee spoon of salt, a pinch of black pepper, chopped herbs (cilantro is best here), two tablespoons of sunflower oil, juice from half a lemon. Mashed mass. Such eggplant paste can be stored in the refrigerator for no more than three days.
Jewish recipe
It differs from the classical one only in that chicken eggs are included in the list of ingredients. Immediately boil two or three pieces to a “hard-boiled” state. While the eggs are cooking, set the oven to heat up to 200-250 degrees. According to this recipe, eggplant (two pieces of medium size) are not cut, but baked whole. But so that they do not “explode” from the prisoner inside the steam, we pre-pierce them in several places with a knife with a sharp tip. Together with the eggplant we put on the grill of the oven (or grill) an unpeeled head of garlic. We bake until the moment when black “tan marks” appear on the blue barrels. Hebrew eggplant paste is prepared in a similar manner to the classic recipe. Scrap the pulp and transfer to a blender. Shred two onions and fry on the spread until golden. We clean the eggs, cut, shift with the onions to the eggplant. Mashed mass. Season with salt and spices.
Mutabbal
It is suspected that Sephardic Jews learned to make eggplant paste from their Arab neighbors. They do not use hard-boiled eggs for nutrition, but walnuts. There is a mutabbal variation with fried sesame seeds. Such a paste has less calorie content. We start cooking with eggplant baking. The grill will be an ideal way, but for lack of it the oven will do as well. Do not forget to pierce two pieces of blue. Once the vegetables are soft, remove them from the oven. Cut and get the pulp. Fry fifty grams of sesame seeds in a dry frying pan until a light nutty smell appears. We spread the seeds in a bowl with the pulp of eggplant. Squeeze out the same juice from half a lemon. Finely chop three cloves of garlic. Add to the future paste. Puree the entire contents of the bowl with a blender. We season with olive oil (four tablespoons in sesame, one with nuts), salt, spices (include a little ground ginger in their list), fresh herbs.
Babaganush
This is another fake “liver” paste with eggplant. To make it, you need tahini paste - it is sold ready-made in supermarkets. First, bake whole four to five eggplants at a temperature of two hundred and twenty degrees, as indicated in previous recipes. Cool, select the pulp with a spoon. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon. Next, add three to four tablespoons of sesame tahini paste. If this ingredient is purchased from you, then carefully add salt and paste olive oil carefully - they are already present in the store product. Which of the spices you need to put in the paste necessarily? Three cloves of crushed garlic, coriander, hot red pepper. The magic of the Arab East will add zira and curry. Grind everything with a blender or just knead a masher for mashed potatoes. Ready pate seasoned with fresh herbs cilantro. It is good to spread on oriental cakes - chapatis or pita.
Liver and eggplant paste
Sometimes it happens that we have a liver, but it is too small. How to make a lot of paste from such a piece? Eggplant will help us with this. One large fruit will require only three hundred and fifty grams of liver. First, chop the eggplant coarsely and sprinkle with salt. We leave for twenty minutes to get bitterness. Take a baking dish and cut the eggplant into cubes. We clear and chop the large onion. Add to the container. We release one bell pepper from the stalk and seeds. Cut the flesh into strips and put it in the baking dish. We send the liver and four chopped cloves of garlic there. Salt, pepper, pour two tablespoons of any vegetable oil. Put the mold in the oven for a quarter of an hour at a temperature of two hundred and twenty degrees. Stir and continue to bake for another ten minutes. When everything is ready, fill the mass with butter (about sixty grams). Well, then grind everything to the state of paste. It can be spread on bread. But also it can be used for cooking pasta in a naval way.
Eggplant and liver pate for the winter
A dish made according to the previous recipe can be stored in the refrigerator for three days, and even then in a glass jar with a lid. And how to make a blank for the winter? Immediately after we added butter to the baked vegetables with liver and grinded the mass with a blender, the eggplant paste for the winter should be transferred to scalded glass jars and screwed with sterile lids. The bottom of a large pan is covered with a soft towel. We put in cans and water for two-thirds. We sterilize our preparation for the winter for about an hour. Cans should be removed from the pan only when the water has completely cooled, otherwise they will burst.