Now is the season of paprika and preparation of ajvar. My family loves it Ajvar only from roasted peppers while I like a mixture with blue tomatoes or a combination with red tomatoes and carrots.
Every year I struggle cooking ajvar on the stove because it has to be cooked and stirred for a long time so it doesn't burn. Then I decided to try out how it would look in a pan in the oven. I wasn't mistaken. This way is much simpler and faster.
You don't have to stir it every hour and it's ready twice as fast, and it tastes much better than when it's cooked on the stove. That's how I made it easier for myself and now it's the only way to prepare ajvar. This one is paired with eggplant and I hope you like it.
Ajvar baked in the oven. What do you think, is it possible? - Snezana Knežević - Recipes and Cookbook online
Now is the season of paprika and preparation of ajvar. My family likes ajvar only with roasted peppers, while I like a mixture with blue tomatoes or a combination with red tomatoes and carrots.
Ajvar baked in the oven, ingredients:
- 7 kg of red pepper (roasted)
- 3 kg of blue eggplant (roasted)
- 5 dl of olive oil
- 4 tablespoons fine sea salt (or to taste)
- 1 tablespoon of granulated garlic
- 1 tablespoon of turmeric powder
- 2 dl apple cider vinegar (or any other as desired)
Ajvar baked in the oven, preparation:
- Roast and peel the pepper, clean it from the seeds and strain it in a colander for as long as it takes to clean all the pepper. In my case, I clean the pepper and put it in a colander so that it is drained at the same time.
Roast and peel the blue tomatoes.
The roasting process should be as you normally do, in my case it was roasted on a smerdevac, it was kept in a nylon bag to steam, during cleaning I don't use water, but I rinse the pepper in the water released by the pepper and drain it in a colander while cleaning it.
Grind the pepper and eggplant separately in a chopper or in a meat grinder. For me, it is faster in the chop and the effect is the same because it is not chopped to the end.
- Pour half the amount of oil into the baking pan and put it in the oven to heat up.
Add a portion of the eggplant to one side of the roasting pan and the pepper and spices to the other. Cover and put back in the oven to heat up and the vegetables and spices start to fry, about half an hour.
- Now add the rest of the vegetables, cover and return to the oven. After about half an hour, mix everything again and combine, add the rest of the oil on top, cover with the lid of the baking pan and put it back in the oven. Bake like that for about 1 hour.
- Toward the end of baking, when the vegetables have softened, add salt and acid and return to the oven for another half hour to combine the flavors.
- Remove the pan from the oven and pour the hot ajvar into the jars to the top, cover and turn upside down. Cover the jars with a kitchen towel and leave to cool. Turn them over when they cool down and put them in the pantry.
Someone uses essence instead of vinegar, so you can acidify ajvar in your own way.
I do not put a preservative in the ajvar, because when the jars are vacuum sealed in this way, there is no need for it. Note: once you open the jar, you have to keep it in the fridge, although in our country it doesn't even get to the fridge, because it gets eaten. From this amount of peppers and blue tomatoes, I got 10 jars of 720 g.
The raw pepper was about 16 kg, while the blue eggplant loses a little weight, so about 4 kg is enough.
I use olive oil for ajvar, because it is healthier, and otherwise I don't use sunflower oil for health reasons.
Snezana Knežević
Originally published: 17.08.2018.
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