As Leonid Osipovich Utesov said: "Many would like to be born in Odessa, but not everyone succeeds." But to plunge headlong into the atmosphere of unique Odessa charm together with "With taste" you will always succeed. Drop everything and go create with us Odessa flavor right at home!

Odessa cuisine It's not just nutritious and tasty food. It is as multifaceted and diverse as the history and culture of the many nationalities living in this port city. . But blue caviar- probably the most striking of them. How can you not stop here, so as not to describe it in all the details ?!

Sharp, almost burning, insanely aromatic minced vegetables and herbs paste it is prepared outrageously simple, but the memory of the incomparable taste remains forever in the hearts of everyone who has tried it at least once.

The peculiarity of this appetizer is that the ingredients are subjected to a minimum of heat treatment: only eggplants are baked, and then not for long. Sunflower oil for caviar, take not that whitish tasteless one that almost all shelves are filled with, find unrefined, rich orange and insanely fragrant. You can adjust the spiciness of caviar by adding more or less hot pepper. Some Odessa housewives put bell peppers, tomatoes and onions in caviar.

Ingredients

Cooking

1. 1 Bake eggplant for 15 minutes at 180 degrees. Place hot in a plastic bag and seal. After 5 minutes, remove the eggplant from the bag, remove the skin, cut the flesh into small cubes.
2. 2 Grate the carrots, finely chop the garlic and herbs. Remove seeds from red pepper and cut into small cubes.
3. 3 Put all prepared ingredients in a deep bowl, salt to taste, pour in sunflower oil, vinegar, mix thoroughly. Transfer the caviar to a jar, close the lid, put in the refrigerator for 8 hours.

Would you like an alternative recipe? The one that is still in use in the dim kitchens of Odessa communal apartments? Then keep in mind that nothing will work without a gas stove. Remove the grate from the stove, make small sides, return the grate. Turn on the fire at full power and put an eggplant directly on it. Hold until lightly charred, turn several times. Do not be afraid, the vegetable will not burn, and the juice will drain onto the foil. You don't need a bag to remove the skin, just scrape it off with a knife. Everything else is according to the recipe. And then you cut off a piece of rye bread, scoop up caviar with it, close your eyes, and mmm... Bon appetit and share our recipes with your friends!

In Odessa, eggplant is called blue. So they say: caviar from blue or blue ones. This method is distinguished by its simplicity and the feeling of freshness that fresh tomatoes give to any vegetable salad. So, another recipe from the international Odessa cuisine, which tells how to cook eggplant caviar.

Necessary products

In order to get Odessa-style eggplant caviar, you need eggplant, tomatoes and onions. Only blue ones are subject to heat treatment, and since the proportion in which there are the same number of them as tomatoes is considered ideal, then, given the weight reduction during baking, they need to be taken a little more. So, for each medium-sized eggplant, you should buy one large steppe tomato. If you take three pieces, you get about a kilogram of both. For a large bowl with a capacity of three to four liters, one onion is needed. 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.

eggplant roasting

Roasting eggplant can be done in the oven or on the stove in a large frying pan covered with a lid. Usually they cut off the tail, but this is not necessary. It is desirable that this happens under a little oppression, but if the blue ones are good, ripe and not very large, then they will be baked without it. Eggplants will be baked for about twenty minutes, they will have to be turned over twice. Readiness comes at the moment when the peel on them begins to burst, and steam comes out from the inside and juice flows. At this point, the heating should be stopped, the eggplants should be removed with a spatula, put on a kitchen board and lightly pressed with a lid from the pan or pan to create conditions for the juice to drain (it is quite bitter). In addition, now they need to be allowed to cool, so that it is easier to peel.

Slicing tomatoes, onions and everything else

The time during the baking process can be used to prepare the rest of the ingredients. Eggplant caviar in Odessa is made without the help of a grater, meat grinder and other mechanical choppers. Only one tool is used - a knife. They should chop the tomatoes and onions. You can immediately salt a mix of tomatoes and onions, and generously - eggplant caviar in Odessa 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, let alone kiss, it is better to refuse garlic.

End phase of the process

Now that all the laborious part of the work is done, it remains a mere trifle: remove the peel from 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. It remains only to pour in the oil, preferably market, dark yellow and odorous, and mix everything with a large spoon. Freshly cooked eggplant caviar is best when it is still warm. It should not be stored for a long time, even in the refrigerator it costs no more than two days. How to cook eggplant caviar is understandable, but how to eat it? Yes, whatever! Odessa etiquette does not provide for restrictions, you can put it on bread, even black, even white, or just eat it with a spoon, it's like anyone. 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 one who cooked it. Bon Appetit!

Every Odessa hostess is convinced that it is her blue caviar that is the most delicious and correct. Naturally, like any popular dish, there are differences in the recipe and in the proportions of the ingredients. But one general principle works here - eggplants must be baked on the grill or in the oven, but tomatoes are always used raw. Bulgarian pepper is 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 ask, is it possible to use a meat grinder? Of course, it is more rational to use it, especially if you cook many portions at once, but do not tell the inhabitants of Odessa about this, many consider this a real crime! This changes the consistency of the snack, it will turn out different, homogeneous and slightly more watery.

Total cooking time: 60 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

• eggplant - 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

Cooking

First of all, let's deal with eggplant and pepper. We wash the eggplants and often pierce with a fork over the entire surface so that they do not burst in the oven during baking. Put the peppers and eggplant on the grill. We bake at 200-220 degrees in the oven. The blue ones will be ready in about 40 minutes, the peppers earlier. Vegetables should become soft and reach full readiness. Let them cool down.



We clean the blue ones from the skin, cut them lengthwise and clean out all the seeds with a tablespoon. Finely chop the flesh with a knife.



We clean the peppers from the skin (it is removed very easily), remove the stalk with seeds. Cut the pepper into cubes as small as possible.



Next, you need to remove the skin from the tomatoes. To do this, we make cross-shaped incisions on them, lower them into boiling water for a minute and pour them over with ice water. After this procedure, they are very easy to clean. Finely chop the tomato pulp, almost mashed. In total, you will need 2-3 small tomatoes. It is very important that they are good, ripe, ground. But greenhouse tomatoes from supermarkets are better to bypass, they will not give a “real” tomato taste to our snack.



We clean a small onion from the husk and chop it into a cube, very finely. If your onion is bitter, then soak for 10 minutes in cold water, after which we squeeze the water so that excess moisture does not get into the caviar. If there is no desire to chop the onion, then it can be chopped on a grater. We push the garlic through a press or also chop with a knife. Mix with vegetables.



Add chopped herbs, salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Fill with oil and mix.



You can eat raw eggplant caviar in Odessa style right away, but it’s even better to let it brew for about 1 hour in the refrigerator - this way it will become much tastier.

Odessa-style eggplant caviar is usually served fresh, generously spread on bread and enjoying the wonderful taste and aroma of vegetable snacks in their almost original form. If you can’t eat everything at once, then we shift it into a glass jar and send it to the refrigerator. Appetizer with a pronounced aroma of garlic, very pleasant to the taste. You still have to try it!

Eggplant caviar is a dish that smells in summer from every Odessa apartment, from every house. Previously, when all the families in the yard communicated, they often cooked food together, and celebrated something or simply dined right in the yard, at a large laid table, like one big family. Everyone brought something of their own - delicious. In almost every courtyard there was a place for cooking, where barbecue, fish, freshly caught mussels or "blue caviar" were cooked. For her, there was a special iron sheet, on which vegetables were baked until cooked, on another, the same, mussels were cooked. Every year there are fewer and fewer such courtyards, some leave forever, some move to new buildings. I want to show you a recipe for Odessa eggplant caviar, cooked at home, which will be as close as possible to the original, which was once prepared by my beloved neighbor Rosa Naumovna.

To prepare eggplant caviar in Odessa, take the products from the list. Vegetables should be washed under running water.

Eggplants and peppers should be strongly seared over a gas burner, so they will acquire the smell and taste of a fire. Transfer to a baking dish and bring to readiness in the oven for 25-30 minutes at 180 degrees in convection mode. You can, of course, cook them on a gas burner until cooked, but be prepared for the fact that after cooking the first eggplant, the neighbors will call firefighters)))

While the vegetables are roasting, finely chop the onion.

Tomatoes need to be cut into four parts, grate on a coarse grater, discard the skin. Add grated tomato and a little salt to the onion. While the vegetables are baking, the onion will marinate.

Cool the cooked vegetables slightly, peel them - it is easy to peel. If this procedure is difficult with pepper, put it in a tight plastic bag for a while, and it will be easy to peel the skin.

Squeeze the eggplant from excess liquid, chop with a knife with a large cube of pepper.

Add tomato with onion, minced garlic and chopped cilantro.

Season with vegetable oil, add salt to taste, mix. Caviar should remain in large pieces, then all the tastes of vegetables will be preserved, although I know families who twist eggplant caviar in a meat grinder. But to be honest, this is a completely different taste and appearance.

Serve Odessa eggplant caviar with meat, fish, potatoes, and don't forget about the freshest bread.

Odessa eggplant caviar is ready. Enjoy!