The Vegetables Are Coming! The Vegetables Are Coming!

By Caroline Clough in Food on Aug 22, 2006 4:32PM

Recently Chicagoist has suffered a terrible, wonderful fate. This fate is both a gift ... and a curse. Of course, we're talking about the vegetables that are overrunning our lives, not to mention our refrigerators. It's an overwhleming task to process all the different kinds of produce one can get in late summer, what with community gardens, farmers' markets and farmshares. You don't even want to think about the amount of pesto we've made in the last two weeks. We began our attempt to cut down on the number of vegetables we have in our refrigerator on Monday with the salad you, too, can make ... after the jump.

This salad is a great mix of sweet and salty, crunchy and soft, basically it's a salad of paradoxes wrapped up in enigmas, covered in mystery and tied with a bow of good taste. And, like most of our recipes, it's pretty simple to make.

What You Need
1 medium sized eggplant
1 white Onion
1 cucumber
1 big scallion (or three little ones)
1 beet (cooked)
1 1/2 handfull of cherry tomatoes
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1/4-1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
salt
pepper

What You Do
1. First off you have to cut the eggplant into a little less than an inch slices. Then in a large, well oiled skillet, cook them. Making sure to coat each side in olive oil. You could also grill them, the point is to get them all soft and tasty with maybe a little browning here and there.

2. While you're cooking the eggplant ... or while it's cooling down a little, chop the white onion, scallions and basil, dice the beets and halve the tomatoes. Slice the cucumber as you see fit, we halved ours and then cut it into lovely semi-circular bites.
3. Put aside four or five of the eggplant slices, whichever ones you like the look of best. Then cut the rest into quarters.
4. Mix all the chopped, diced, quartered and halved veggies all together.
5. Add about 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4-1/2 cup balsamic vinegar (this depends on how much you like the taste of balsamic vinegar ... we like it so we put in the full 1/2 cup.
6. Mince the garlic cloves and throw them in, mixing well.
7. Salt and pepper to taste.
8. Top the mixture off with your most aesthetically pleasing eggplant slices and a few sprigs of fresh basil.

And there you have it. If you put it in the refrigerator for a bit of time (let's say an hour) some of the tastes and textures will come out even more. Feta or goat's cheese are also welcome additions to this vegetarian feast of a salad.

We hope this helps you cope with your produce overload. Good luck!