Around the World in Foodventures (North Macedonia: AJVAR)

Ajvar is a spread, jam, relish, dip, condiment, or sauce (all depending how you choose to use it) made primarily of eggplants, a specific variety of red bell peppers, and oil.  It's easy to make, but can be very time consuming -- though, it's scrumptious and well worth it.

Normally, I just give a link to someone else's recipe that I used, but this time around (because I referenced many but followed none to the letter, because I greatly reduced the planned yield, and because there are lots of possible ingredient variations anyways) I decided to write out exactly what I did to get the final result I ended up with.  Here goes....

INGREDIENTS:

• a 1.25 pound Eggplant
• 4 pounds "Italian Peppers" (these weren't regular red bells, but darker and smaller, and were the closest thing my market had to actual Red Bull’s Horn a/k/a Corno di Toro peppers)
• 10 Tablespoons of Vegetable Oil (I had, and so used, Safflower)
• Additional oil for initial cooking of the Eggplant (the exact amount depends on the size of your pot, see Step #8 below)
• a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of Sugar
• 1 teaspoon of Kosher Salt

METHOD:

1. Preheat your oven to 475°F.
2. Cover two baking sheets with foil and lay the Peppers out on them with space in between.  Roast the Peppers for about 45 minutes, checking on and turning them every so often (rotate the baking sheets and/or switch which rack each one is on if you find that one side, corner, or rack is cooking faster than another).  Your oven may take longer or even less time (so just keep an eye on them) -- in the end, you want them to be soft, leaking some juices, and have little black patches all over with the skin starting to bubble up.
3. Remove the Peppers to a large bowl (or multiple bowls if you don't have one big enough to fit them all) and cover tightly with plastic wrap or foil....or, the bowl's own cover if it has one.  The goal here is to steam them in their residual heat so that by the time they are completely cooled, the skins will come off easily.  Leave them there until they are completely cool.
4. Roast the Eggplant the same way you did the Peppers (you could of course do it at the same time as the Peppers if you have space in your oven).  The Eggplant may take a little more or less time than the Peppers, so be sure to keep a special eye on it.
5. When done cooking, the Eggplant should also go into a well sealed bowl (separate from the peppers) so that it can steam in its own residual heat for later easy skin removal.
6. When everything is cool enough to handle, carefully remove the stems and peel off the skins, retaining as much of the flesh as possible.  You may find that dipping the Peppers in a bowl of water will help to remove their seeds.  Keep the Eggplant's seeds.  And make sure there are as few blackened bits as possible left on anything.
7. Some recipes say to dice the Peppers and Eggplant into very, very small pieces (retaining as much of their juices as possible) -- and others say to grind them down into a paste.  I opted to do the dicing.  Whatever you do, just keep storing them in those separate bowls, because they will be going into the cook pot at different times.
8. In a pot large enough to fit all the ingredients plus have a few inches of space on top, add approximately 1/3" - 1/2" of Vegetable oil.  Warm it up, add the diced Eggplant, and simmer (not deep fry) for 15 minutes, stirring frequently so nothing sticks to the bottom.
9. Add the diced Peppers, mix to combine well, and reduce the temperature to where you get the ever so gentlest boil happening.
10. Next, we need to cook the mixture.  Some recipes cite only 30-ish minutes of cooking; but it sure sounded to me like true tradition requires hours of cooking, so I chose that path.  I went for about 4 hours, stirring every 5 minutes to prevent burning or sticking, as well as adding in a couple teaspoons of the Vegetable Oil about every 15 minutes.  (This may have been too long considering how much I cut down the volume of this recipe, but that's okay. -- I'm not sad about it at all.)
11. When you are nearing the finish line* add in the Sugar.  Keep stirring! 😃
12. At the very end, throw in the Salt.
13. I noticed that the diced and cooked vegetables wanted to stay separated from the oil in my pot.  So, because some recipes call for grinding the vegetables (instead of dicing) even before cooking, I decided at this point to put it all in a blender and get it to emulsify.  I think this was a good idea; it resulted in a more cohesive final product with a better (in my opinion) texture throughout. 

* Where is the finish line?  Some recipes say you're looking for a bright orange hue.  Others show something much more red and deep.  What you don't want is to be moving over into brown tones.  Also important is a creamy consistency.

Customarily, people jar and preserve the Ajvar (because it's something they would make in much larger quantities than I did, likely only once annually at pepper harvest time, then store and use it all year round).  I'm not an expert in canning, so if you want to go that route, I urge you to research and choose a method that is best and safest for you.  For me, personally, I planned to use what I made within a few days, so I just lidded my one-and-a-half jars and stuck them in the fridge.  I cannot advise as to how long they will (or should) stay good this way, but I expect we will have consumed it all well before they could spoil anyways.

Some Ajvar recipes call for additions like hot pepper flake or vinegar or garlic, or even olives.  I opted to forego these things and stick to the "purest" form of the food, partly because I bought a commercially-made jar of Ajvar that I wanted to compare what I made to (my understanding being that it just couldn't compete with homemade)....

....and they certainly weren't the same.  They're both identifiable as Ajvar, of course, and both pretty addictive (I could barely stop taste-testing and comparing them).  I think I like that the eggplant is more pronounced in mine than it is in the factory-made jar which is much more pepper forward -- this makes mine more savory and theirs sweeter.  It also seemed like the two flavors in mine were more integrated (in other words, the peppers and eggplant merged together to form a new, singularly coherent, rich taste rather than how the storebought jar was more like two separate things mixed together).  Theirs is kind of chunky and a little thicker, and mine is smoother and creamier.  I would happily eat lots of either one, and I can't wait to get both of these onto some bread!  

This post is part of my project: "Around the World in Foodventures" (I decided I want to expand my culinary horizons even further by making the national dish or a popular recipe, or some signature food or traditional meal from every country in the world. Maybe it'll happen alphabetically, or by region, in random order, or something else. I figure if we can't (yet?) travel everywhere, we at least have the luxury of being able to taste it. It’ll be fun and interesting, but obviously, will take a long time to get through -- as I'll only be doing it once a week or so at most. I am chronicling the journey here.)

“If I’m an advocate of anything, it’s to move…Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food.” --Tony Bourdain