Blue caviar in Odessa style. Eggplant caviar. How it is prepared in Odessa Baked eggplant caviar in Odessa style
Odessa-style eggplant caviar can be prepared according to different recipes, but its essence lies in the fact that it is prepared from baked eggplants and raw vegetables. The main component is eggplant, and the rest is according to your preference. For this caviar I try to take blue round ones called the hybrid variety “Bourgeois”, since they have practically no bitterness.
Odessa-style eggplant caviar also includes sweet red and green bell peppers, onions, young zucchini, garlic and fresh tomatoes. And seasonings, spices, green stuff are taken according to your taste. The secret product in this caviar is the small content of white horseradish root, which stimulates the appetite and helps kill pathogenic microbes due to phytoncides. Which helps to extend the shelf life of cold snacks.
Eggplant caviar in Odessa - a recipe with a secret ingredientIt differs from the one we prepare in the usual way, in that some of the products here are baked in the oven, and the rest are used raw. And also, the fact that all the vegetables included in the composition are cut into small crumbs, and are not passed through a meat grinder.
Here I’ll immediately make a reservation that such a cold appetizer turns out to be very tasty, appetizing and healthy for our body. Nothing fried, just eat and enjoy. I will also say that after eating a cooked batch of eggplant caviar, I want to cook it several times.
Technology for preparing eggplant caviar in Odessa:
1. First, you should prepare all the ingredients for preparing the snack.
Prepare all ingredients for appetizers 
Bake eggplants, peppers and zucchini for caviar 3. After this time, remove all vegetables from skins and seeds. True, some of them remain with eggplants, since it is difficult to free them from small seeds.
Remove all vegetables from skins and seeds 4. Then finely chop the eggplant and pepper pulp.
Finely chop the eggplant and pepper pulp 5. Then chop the white onion.
Chop white onion 6. Then remove the skin from the tomatoes and chop them into small cubes. Important! Tomatoes need to be tasty, sweet and preferably homemade.
Remove the skins from the tomatoes and chop them into small cubes. 7. Place prepared tomatoes, onions and peppers and eggplants in a bowl.
Place the prepared tomatoes, onions, peppers, eggplants in a bowl. 8. Remove the zucchini from the oven, cut into several pieces and remove the thin skin from the surface.
Cut the zucchini into several pieces and remove the thin skin 9. Next, chop the horseradish root and garlic into fine crumbs.
Chop the horseradish root and garlic into fine crumbs 10. At the end, sprinkle with chopped dill, season with salt and sweet paprika.
Add dill, salt and sweet paprika 11. At the final stage, add vegetable or olive oil and mix effectively.
Season the caviar with vegetable oil and mix 12. Place the finished caviar in glass jars and put it in the refrigerator so that it infuses and you can test the taste. It is perfect for fried meat, shish kebab, or even just as a spread on rye bread.
Eggplant caviar in Odessa style Composition of raw materials:
- blue ones - three pieces;
- zucchini - 1 small size;
- ripe tomatoes - 3 fruits;
- sweet pepper - 3-4 peppercorns;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- horseradish root - crushed 3-4 teaspoons;
- fresh dill - 1 bunch;
- vegetable oil - 3 tablespoons;
- salt, paprika - at your discretion.
The caviar is tender and very juicy. The taste is sour-salty. Small pieces of onion crunch pleasantly on your teeth.
The peculiarity of this recipe is that only eggplants are baked, and all other vegetables are added raw.
You don’t have to put garlic in the caviar at all; the spiciness of the onion is quite enough. But if you decide to put it in, then take a very small clove so that it gives the caviar a flavor, but does not affect the taste.
COMPOUND
2 medium eggplants (300~350g), 1 medium tomato (150g), 1 very small onion (40g), 1~2 tbsp vegetable oil (15~35g), 1/3 teaspoon salt, pepper, greens (dill, parsley, basil), if desired - 1 very small clove of garlic
Cover a wire rack with foil and place the washed eggplants on it.
Pierce the eggplants in several places to prevent them from exploding during baking.
Bake at t=220°C until done (30~40 minutes). To determine readiness, you need to pierce the eggplants near the stem with a fork or knife. If the tool goes in easily, then the eggplants are ready.
Wrap the eggplants in the foil they were placed on and leave until cool.
Cut the cooled eggplants in half lengthwise and scoop out the pulp with a spoon.
Place the pulp on a cutting board and finely chop with a knife.
Wash the tomato, cut in half and remove the stem.
Grate the tomato on a coarse grater.
You need to start grating from the cut side, then the tomato pulp will pass through the grater, and the skin will remain in your hand.
Chop the onion as finely as possible.
Place the onion in a bowl and pour boiling water over it.
After 3 seconds, drain the boiling water and immediately rinse the onions with very cold water to stop the heating.
Drain the water thoroughly.
Place eggplant and onion in a bowl with grated tomato.
You can also add a small clove of garlic pressed through a press.
Add salt and pepper, add vegetable oil.
If desired, add finely chopped herbs.
Stir and taste. Add salt if necessary.
If the tomato was too sweet, you can acidify the caviar with lemon juice or natural vinegar. If the tomato was sour, then the excess acid can be extinguished with a pinch of powdered sugar.
To add spiciness to the caviar, you can add a few drops of Tabasco sauce or a little very finely chopped fresh hot pepper or a quarter of a coffee spoon of adjika.
Eggplant caviar is best served with fresh bread or thick lavash.
Exit: approximately 400ml.
The sponsor of the publication of this recipe is the oldest Finnish company Fiskars, which began in the 17th century with metallurgical production, and today produces some of the best kitchen knives in the world. If you want the cooking process to become a pleasure and filled with creative inspiration, then Fiskars kitchen knives are undoubtedly your choice.
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In Odessa, eggplants are called blue. That’s what they say: blue or little blue caviar. This method is distinguished by its simplicity and the feeling of freshness that fresh tomatoes give any vegetable salad. So, another recipe from international Odessa cuisine, telling how to make eggplant caviar.
Required Products
To make Odessa-style eggplant caviar, you need eggplants, tomatoes and onions. Only blue ones are subject to heat treatment, and since the ideal proportion is considered to be in which there are as many of them as tomatoes, then, given the reduction in weight during baking, you need to take a little more of them. So, for every medium-sized eggplant you should buy one large steppe tomato. If you take three pieces, you get about a kilogram of each. For a large bowl with a capacity of three to four liters you need one onion. You will also need sunflower oil, one hundred and fifty grams, as well as salt. Additional ingredients such as garlic, sweet and hot peppers are possible, but not required - it depends on taste and personal preference.
Baking eggplants
Baking eggplants can be done in the oven or on the stove in a large frying pan covered with a lid. Usually their tail is cut off, but this is not necessary. It is advisable that this happens under slight pressure, but if the blue ones are good, ripe and not very large, then they will bake without it. The eggplants will bake for about twenty minutes, you will have to turn them over a couple of times. Readiness occurs at the moment when the peel on them begins to burst, and steam comes out from inside and juice flows. At this point, the heating should be stopped, the eggplants should be removed with a spatula, placed on a kitchen board and lightly pressed with a lid from a frying pan or saucepan to create conditions for the juice to drain (it is quite bitter). In addition, now they need to be allowed to cool to make peeling easier.
Slicing tomatoes, onions and everything else
The baking time can be used to prepare the remaining ingredients. Eggplant caviar in Odessa is made without the help of a grater, meat grinder or other mechanical grinders. Only one tool is used - a knife. They should be used to cut tomatoes and onions. You can immediately add salt to the mixture of tomatoes and onions, and generously - Odessa-style eggplant caviar loves salt. You can also add finely chopped garlic and pepper, one or two types, but this is optional. If you have to talk to someone, or even kiss someone, it is better to avoid garlic.
Final phase of the process
Now that all the labor-intensive part of the work is done, all that remains is a mere trifle: peel the eggplants and cut them. It would be inconvenient to do this with hot blue ones, but they have already cooled down. After cutting to the same size as the rest of the ingredients, they should be added to a common bowl. All that remains is to pour in the oil, preferably market oil, dark yellow and fragrant, and mix everything with a large spoon. Freshly prepared eggplant caviar tastes best while it is still warm. It should not be stored for a long time; even in the refrigerator it lasts no more than two days. It’s clear how to prepare eggplant caviar, but how to eat it? Whatever! Odessa etiquette does not provide for restrictions, you can put it on bread, be it black or white, or just eat it with a spoon, it’s whatever you want. By the way, there are no quantitative limits either; the main thing is to eat caviar with pleasure and do not forget to praise the person who prepared it. Bon appetit!
Odessa housewives love and know how to cook blue ones, which is what they call eggplants in Odessa.
Ingredients
- eggplants - 2-3 pcs.
- sweet peppers - 2-3 pcs.
- tomatoes - 2-3 pcs.
- garlic cloves - 2-3 pcs.
- onions - 2-3 pcs.
- and 50 ml of vegetable oil.
Preparation
1. Place the peppers and eggplants in the oven for 10-15 minutes until they soften and “tan” on the skin.
2. Cut the tomatoes crosswise and place them in boiling water for two to three minutes. Remove the skin and chop with a knife.
3. Grate the onion on a coarse grater and combine with the tomatoes.
4. Peel the pepper, remove the seeds, chop with a knife, and place in a bowl with the onions and tomatoes.
5. Do the same with eggplants as with peppers. If desired, leave the skin on half of the baked eggplants, so the taste of the caviar will be more intense.
6. Combine eggplants with other vegetables.
7. Salt the chopped vegetables; if the tomatoes were sour, you can add a spoonful of sugar.
Place the vegetables in a saucepan and add the oil.
8. Warm up the eggplant caviar on the stove for 10 minutes. Squeeze the garlic and add pepper if desired.
The advantage of this recipe is that it does not require a large amount of oil, frying each piece in it, so the caviar is low in calories.
Odessa-style eggplant caviar is delicious both hot and cold.
Important! Choose vegetables for eggplant caviar that are mature, beautiful, and of high quality.
Note to the hostess
1. The attractive appearance of vegetables is not always a clear indicator of their quality. For example, for preparing caviar, ripe, even overripe tomatoes that have collected maximum juice are preferred. But they rarely retain their integrity and often have a non-marketable appearance. This should not scare off an experienced housewife; the main thing is the absence of rot on the fruits. Regardless of the type of tomatoes, preparing caviar “originally from Odessa” is not complete without a pinch of sugar.
2. An indicator of the quality and freshness of eggplants is firm pulp, glossy skin and green stalk. Pre-roasting the eggplants and peppers isn't just part of the cooking process—it makes peeling them much easier.
3. Sweet carrots significantly improve the consumer qualities of caviar, but they must be stewed separately until soft.
4. Not every housewife dares to grate onions, and this requirement is simply inhumane. It is much easier to pass it through a meat grinder or grind it in a blender.
5. No matter how little oil the caviar contains, you should not simmer it for a long time, as in this case the oil will oxidize and give the food an unpleasant rancid taste.
6. Practical Odessa residents sometimes add finely chopped potatoes to caviar for satiety.
Every Odessa housewife is convinced that her blue caviar is the most delicious and correct. Naturally, like any popular dish, there are differences in both the recipe and the proportions of ingredients. But one general principle works here - eggplants must be baked on the grill or in the oven, but tomatoes are always used raw. Bell peppers are not always added; greens are also taken according to taste and mood: parsley, cilantro, basil or dill. Everything must be seasoned with vegetable oil, the amount to taste.
All vegetables for raw eggplant caviar are finely chopped with a knife. You may ask, is it possible to use a meat grinder? Of course, it’s more rational to use it, especially if you prepare many portions at once, but don’t tell Odessa residents about this, many consider it a real crime! This changes the consistency of the snack; it will turn out different, homogeneous and a little more watery.
Total cooking time: 60 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
- eggplants – 2-3 pcs.
- red bell pepper – 1 pc.
- ripe tomatoes, small – 2-3 pcs.
- garlic - 3 teeth.
- small onion – 1 pc.
- sunflower oil – 1-2 tbsp. l.
- sugar, salt and pepper - to taste
- parsley, dill, basil – 10 g
Preparation
First of all, let's deal with eggplants and peppers. We wash the eggplants and often pierce them with a fork over the entire surface so that they do not burst in the oven during baking. Place the peppers and eggplants on the grill. Bake at 200-220 degrees in the oven. The blue ones will be ready in about 40 minutes, the peppers - earlier. The vegetables should become soft and fully cooked. Let them cool down.
We peel the little blue ones, cut them lengthwise and clean out all the seeds using a tablespoon. Finely chop the pulp with a knife.
We peel the peppers (it comes off very easily) and remove the stalk and seeds. We also cut the pepper into cubes as small as possible.
Next you need to remove the skins from the tomatoes. To do this, we make cross-shaped cuts on them, lower them into boiling water for a minute and pour over ice water. After this procedure they are very easy to clean. Chop the tomato pulp finely, almost into a puree. In total you will need 2-3 small tomatoes. It is very important that they are good, ripe, ground. But it is better to avoid greenhouse tomatoes from supermarkets; they will not give a “real” tomato taste to our snack.
We peel a small onion and chop it into cubes, very finely. If your onions are bitter, then soak them in cold water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the water so that excess moisture does not get into the caviar. If you don’t want to chop the onion, you can grate it. We press the garlic through a press or chop it with a knife. Mix with vegetables.
Add chopped herbs, salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Add oil and mix.
You can eat raw Odessa-style eggplant caviar right away, but it’s even better to let it brew for about 1 hour in the refrigerator - this will make it much tastier.
Odessa-style eggplant caviar is usually served fresh, generously spread on bread and enjoying the wonderful taste and aroma of the vegetable appetizer in almost its original form. If you can’t eat everything at once, then put it in a glass jar and put it in the refrigerator. A snack with a pronounced garlic aroma, very pleasant to the taste. You still have to try it!
