Eggplant Rolls with Walnuts: Georgian-Style Appetizer
The Olympus of cooking! What does it look like??? Surely no one can say. But I'm sure the cuisines of the Caucasus hold some of the top spots there, and deservedly so.
Lobio, kharcho, eggplant with walnuts, shashlik, khash, chacha, ayran, churchkhela have long been the Caucasus's calling cards and are made all over the world. Very popular are eggplant with tomatoes, eggplant with cheese and other eggplant appetizers in all their forms.
For all the diversity of the Caucasian cuisines, almost all their dishes share a common style: the use of certain ingredients common in the Caucasus, and a contrast of hot, fragrant and spicy.
Among the wealth of hot and sour sauces, adjika, tkemali, satsebeli, the tastiest in my view is bazhe: a spicy sauce of walnuts with garlic and wine vinegar. It's usually served with meat and fish.
Various eggplant dishes are also very popular appetizers. Eggplant with a filling of nuts, fragrant herbs, garlic and wine vinegar, similar to bazhe, is simply amazing. And with walnuts in the filling, you get a truly unique appetizer: eggplant with walnuts. Let's make fried eggplant with walnuts
Ingredients
4-6 servings
- Eggplants 2-3
- Walnuts 100 g
- Onion 1
- Garlic 4-5 cloves
- Cilantro 0.5 bunch
- Vegetable oil 100 ml
- Khmeli-suneli, grape vinegar, salt to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- First, prepare the eggplants. Wash and dry them. Cut off the ends. Slice the eggplants lengthwise into thin slices, no more than 1 cm thick. Don't use the outer slices. A medium eggplant gives 4-6 slices.
- If the eggplants are bitter, salt the slices generously and put them under a weight for 15-20 minutes to draw out the bitterness.
- While the eggplant “rests”, make the filling. Chop the cilantro with a knife and set aside.
- Peel the garlic and onion.
- You can make the filling by putting everything through a meat grinder, or you can blitz it in a blender. We'll use a blender.
- Put the walnuts, peeled garlic, the onion cut into 4-6 pieces and the cilantro in a blender, add salt and khmeli-suneli to taste, and pour in 1 tbsp grape vinegar. Blend everything to a paste.
- Mix the paste very thoroughly. If it's too dry, add a little pomegranate juice or wine vinegar. And the filling is ready.
- Rinse the salt off the eggplant, squeeze it with your hands and pat dry with a paper towel. If you didn't salt the eggplant, go straight to frying. Fry in vegetable oil in a very hot skillet until golden on each side. Try not to overcook. Eggplant soaks up a lot of oil while frying, so add more as you go.
- The eggplant should turn deep golden. Put the fried eggplant on a plate and let it cool.
- For a nicer presentation, you can arrange the rolls on lettuce leaves. While the eggplant cools, lay spinach or lettuce leaves on a large platter. If the leaves are a little limp, put them in cold water beforehand; they'll turn crisp and fresh.
- Once the eggplant has cooled, start rolling. Put a heaping teaspoon of filling on the end of an eggplant slice and press it lightly with your fingers into a firm lump. One by one, carefully roll each eggplant slice around the filling.
- Arrange the eggplant rolls on the prepared platter. You can even add a few herbs.
- Put the eggplant with walnuts in the fridge to chill.
| Serves: | 4-6 servings |
| Calories: | 145 |
| Prep: | 20 mins |
| Cook: | 40 mins |
| Total: | 1 h |
| Category: | Snacks and Sauces |
| Cuisine: | Caucasian cuisine |
| Rating: |
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4.6
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