Moroccan Eggplant Salad Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re gonna make a salad with some eggplant.

Now eggplant is not so nice when it’s raw, some of you might like it. Personally I don’t. So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to cook this eggplant which not only is going to make it taste better but it also is really nice in a salad.

If you’re sick with salad try putting something cooked in it like a cooked vegetable or a cooked bean or a cooked grain is sometimes nice to add to the salad. So what I’m gonna do with this eggplant and oh before I start I’ll show you it should be purple and you want to feel the outside if you feel a spot that is really soft, that’s gonna be bruised and you want to cut that spot out but this one is when I touch it, it gives a little bit but it’s pretty solid.

Mostly what you’re looking for is the color, if it’s a green or if its pale, it’s not gonna be as ripe. Now there are different types of eggplant, Japanese eggplants have a slightly different color so if you’re using that one you’re not looking for this vibrant purple color.

Now what I’m gonna do is to shorten the actual time that I’m actually going to cook it over the heat. I’m going to wilt it before I cook it with some salt and what you’re gonna do is dice this guy up.

Dicing it will maximize the surface area that’s gonna be in contact with the salt so it’s going to wilt the most. So just – the way I dice, not sure if this is technically correct I’ve never taken a nice skill course but I cut it into slices and then I’m going to cut along like this.

So that it makes a dice and you can do whatever size you want like I said cutting it into dice is going to maximize the surface area that’s going to touch the salt and also later when we cook it.

So when you dice it up, just put it in a strainer or coriander get this whole thing chopped up. Alright! I use this technique fairly often and I call it different things but it’s basically the same process.

When I do them with kale I called them massaging because I actually get my hands in there and massage the kale to softened it. This time I’m going to call it wilting because what I’m gonna do is just sprinkle the salt over and I’m using my finely ground sea salt for this one.

And then I’m just gonna toss it in with my hands to get this eggplant coated in salt and then I’m just going to set it aside and let it wilt on its own.

And I’ve got this over a bowl so that the water can drain off of the eggplants as it wilts. What happens when you put salt in here is the salt draws the moisture out of the cells out of the vegetables and makes it soften.

So this means that when we go to cook the eggplant we can cook it for less time and it will still be soft. The less time we cook it, the more the nutrients stay intact, the more the enzymes stay intact.

So really get this salt all over this eggplant, add as much as you want because what we’re gonna do is when we’re done wilting we’re gonna rinse it off so you’re not going to be eating this salt, you would need a little bit more coz there’s quite a lot of eggplant in here.

I don’t know if you can see but it’s actually starting to wilt already, softening up just a little bit and I’ll grab back all these little guys that escape on me to the bowl and then like I said you just want to set this aside about half a hour, 20 minutes if you’re really in a rush and then come back and we will sauté it.

Alright! So this eggplant has had half an hour just sitting in here and there’s some water in the bowl underneath. It’s not critical how long this you just wanted to soften up and just keep in mind the longer it sits on the salt, the less time you’re gonna need to sauté it.

What I often do when I get back from work and I want something like this and get it going and in half an hour I can go have a quick workout or check my email or whatever I want to do.

So once this is wilted like I said we’re going to rinse it to get the salt off there because we don’t really need it. Ok! And then make sure it’s somewhat dry, I’m getting my pan heated back here and once that’s hot I’ll add olive oil and get this eggplant sautéing.

Alright! Things are hot over here, now eggplant need a little bit more oil than other vegetables because they suck up the oil like crazy. But I still don’t use very much.

I’ve probably use about a tablespoon of olive oil here and then what you wanna do is mix the eggplant around so that it gets a little bit of a coating of oil. Now another benefit of wilting the eggplant before you sauté is that the eggplant don’t need quite as much oil as they would if you just throw them in the pan fresh.

Because they have some time to wilt and release some of their juices they’re not quite as oil greedy. So get this stir around occasional you will lose an eggplant to the greater universe of the floor but that’s ok.

If it’s a clean floor just toss it back in, if the floor is covered with dog hair, you might not want to do that or you can just rinse it off.

Ok, so once those have gotten a touch of oil around them, spread them out evenly in the pan and then you wanna let it cook. Let the pan heat the eggplant because that’s how it’s going to cook.

So, next thing you’re going to do is rinse up your bowl because your gonna have salty water in there that’s not gonna be tasty. Dry them a little bit if you wish and then you can get the rest of your ingredients into the bowl so what I’m gonna do is I got chopped green olives and some capers here and I’ve got quite a bit here because I like the flavor.

But do however much you like, green olives have less fat than black olives but they do still have fat and quite salty. They add a lot of flavour to this dish. And then what I’m gonna do next is I’m not gonna add the lemon juice yet.

I’m gonna add that ones I have the eggplant in here at the very end but what I am gonna do is get some lettuce and all you do in the lettuce is just ripped it up into bite size pieces. Do however much lettuce you like, whatever type of lettuce you want.

It’s always good to get variety so get different kinds of lettuce get looseleaf ettuce, get Romaine lettuce. Iceberg just doesn’t have anything going for it so I wouldn’t really recommend that one.

Speaking of the eggplant by the way, you can do this dish with like zucchini would do nice if you really don’t like eggplant but I would recommend trying it very so often. I thought I hated eggplant because when I had it, it wasn’t cooked properly.

Try it every so often and see if you like it. Same thing with all vegetables because the thing about vegetables is they’re all good for you and the best part about them is when you get a variety of them and different colors of vegetables, bring different nutrients.

Eggplants are one of the few vegetables that are purple so it’s a good idea to get some of them in your diet if you can. And if you really don’t like eggplant maybe try mixing it so have half eggplant half zucchini or some other vegetable that you like.

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Because the thing about vegetables is they’re all good for you and the best part about them is when you get a variety of them and different colors of vegetables, bring different nutrients.

Eggplants are one of the few vegetables that are purple so it’s a good idea to get some of them in your diet if you can. And if you really don’t like eggplant maybe try mixing it so have half eggplant half zucchini or some other vegetable that you like.

But you really want to get some variety in your diet. That’s one of the key ways to have a healthy diet. So I hear this sizzling and I think it can probably use a little stir. You want this eggplant to have a chance at the heat on all the different sides.

Ok? And then make sure it spreads out evenly and then let it cook and go back to your salad. Alright I’ve got my salad bowl full of lettuce perhaps too full which brings me to another point when you’re looking for salad bowls or when you’re picking a salad bowl out of a cupboard go for the biggest when you can find because its gonna encourage you to make more salad.

Last thing I’m gonna toss in here while the eggplant cooks is some chopped parsley. Parsley is packed with nutrients as well as flavor. Alright my eggplant is still cooking, it’s almost done.

I’ve lost a few pieces to the floor, this is one of the reasons I like to use a high sided pan even when I’m not doing something that needs it because when I stir they tend to fly a little bit.

So what I’m gonna do next is zest my lemon and I’m gonna zest right into the salad so I’m gonna do it a little bit shorter than I normally would because I had a sudden thought that if I juice the lemon now I can use little bit of the juice to finish off the eggplant in the pan so chopped that lemon in half, I just got a little strainer over a bowl take my zester and squeeze.

Alright, so once your eggplant is done cooking and mine is just getting there, the reason I was thinking of adding the lemon juice to the pan is because if you’ll notice when you cook your eggplant when it starts to get really nice and soft and yummy it likes to stick at the bottom of the pan especially if you haven’t use very much oil.

So if we just pour a little bit of lemon juice over the eggplant, not only is it going to flavor the eggplant all around and seal it with the heat but it also is going to unstick all those bits of eggplant that are stuck to the bottom of the pan.

So just pour some of your lemon juice on here, it’s going to bubble and sizzle and then just kind of scrape the bottom of the pan to unstick those little bits. This means that not only are you not losing that eggplant flavor. It also gonna make the pan easier to clean later on.

Which I’m always in favor of! So, give that all going and like I said it’s also going to seal that lemon flavor right around that eggplant which is going to be lovely in the salad.

And all I’m using for dressing in this salad is the rest of this lemon juice and whatever juices are from the eggplant. If you want to use something a little more fancy, make an actual dressing go for it. But lemon juice is gonna work just fine for me.

So turn the heat off and what I’m probably gonna do is because this bowl is so full I’m going to toss it now to get the olives and the capers and everything mix together. I’ll serve it on the plate and I will top it with the eggplants.

Very nice! All ready to go. This will make a beautiful lunch salad or for dinner you can have it on its own or with some kind of grain or bean dish on the side. I,ve been trying to do too many salad on this show because I realize that salad are pretty straight forward and you don’t need a lot of help doing them.

But since it’s getting to be spring like where I live, I’m starting to crave more salad so I hope you enjoy this one. Top it off with some cooked eggplants to make it delicious and a little bit more filing.

And there you go. You can find the recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.