July 13, 2016

Piquillo Pepper and Eggplant Toasts —and hiking to Santa Lucía in Alcocebre, Spain

Natacha Sanz Caballero Vegetables, Tapas Alcoceber, Alcocebre, Alcossebre, eggplant, ermita de Santa Lucía, grilled eggplant, hike, marinated piquillo peppers, montaditos, piquillo, piquillo peppers, Saint Lucia chapel, Spain, toasts

I’m writing this as I’ve just sat down, trying to catch my breath after the hike to la ermita de Santa Lucía, Saint Lucia chapel in Alcocebre, Spain. The breathlessness is real, as the hike is a steep one, trying to navigate rocks, some of them part of a glacier plateau, and bushes of wild rosemary and the many other varieties of wild herbs and low Mediterranean pine trees that make up the mountain. Someone with good sense placed short sections of wooden posts, threaded and linked with nautical rope, along the most difficult to hike stretches of the path, so the novice hiker can hold onto or pull him or herself up, one step at a time, and reach the top.

But the breathlessness is also figurative. Raise your eyes and look up in front of you, and you’ll see the white chapel, almost a speck at first, getting bigger as you get closer, crowning the hill. Look behind you and the Mediterranean will blind you, the sun stretching and rising over the horizon, the beaches and the homes at the bottom, the harbor with its sailboats lined up, some of them venturing out to sea. Look left and you’ll be surprised by a patchwork of fields, groves of lemons, oranges and olives, almonds and figs and vineyards. Cars on the distant road look like ants in a line, while a train on its track slithers past the groves. There’s no place for the eyes to rest, the beauty is stunning 360 degrees around you, and the photos in this post don’t do justice to the beauty (shot with my iphone 6, lighter to carry than my Nikon DSLR camera).

When you reach the top, more treasures await you as you stroll around the chapel, saying hi or buenos días or bonjour to the other hikers that chose the views from that vantage point over an early morning at the beach. Today we even had the chance to look over the shoulders of the anthropologists carefully digging and uncovering fossils and bits and pieces of plates and amphora of lives lived hundreds and thousands of years before us, brushing them gently as if they were diamonds.

I’m typing this, as I was saying, in my bathing suit, hearing the waves break on the shore. Pure bliss.

Coming home every summer is therapy. This is the place where I recharge my batteries, so to speak. The place where days are long, lunches are communal, and sobremesa, after lunch, is lazy, if you’re on vacation. If you’re on vacation is the underlined phrase here —the Spanish siesta is a myth on working days. Nowhere else that I know of will you start lunch at three and finish it at five, and go out for ice cream after dinner at 11:30 PM. And for some reason, the pounds don’t pile up, go figure! (Someone somewhere should probably do a study on Spaniards lifestyle and diet to explain this).

Needless to say, we’ve been feasting since we arrived here, and it would be hard to list all of the dishes and tapas we tasted (click here for more on tapas). Many, or most of them, here in the Valencian Community, are fish or seafood based, my favorite. So I thought I would be a bit original and post a recipe of a tapa that you could make anywhere, and not only if you were on the Mediterranean. Toasts with grilled eggplant and piquillo pepper are a delight, and since you can now find piquillo peppers in the US, canned or jarred, the recipe will be very easy to make. Montaditos is what we call them in Spain, a tapa as a topping on a piece of bread or toast. This recipe is my version of a similar one that uses just the piquillo pepper as the topping, and it’s inspired by one where chef José Garcés uses a cheese and eggplant spread. Try these piquillo pepper and grilled eggplant toasts, and tell me what you think. I promise you won’t to be disappointed, even if you can’t eat them while you watch the waves break in front of you.

PIQUILLO PEPPER AND GRILLED EGGPLANT TOASTS

Montaditos de Piquillo y Berenjena

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant

1 12-ounce can or jar piquillo peppers

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

4 cloves garlic

2 Tbs sherry vinegar

1 Tbs fresh rosemary

1 Tbs flat leaf parsley

1 Tbs fresh oregano

Salt and Pepper to taste

Slices of rustic bread, or slices of baguette cut at an angle

Peel the eggplant and cut it into 1/3-inch-thick round slices. Grill them on a grill pan on medium-high heat, or on a gas grill, until charred marks appear on their surface and the eggplant becomes softer, about 5 minutes. Turn them over and grill them for another 5 minutes or so, until charred marks appear on the other side.

Peel the garlic cloves and slice them into very thin slices. In a small frying pan, heat the oil and cook the garlic over medium heat until soft, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and let it cool down, about 20 minutes. Pour the garlic and oil in a medium bowl and add the sherry vinegar, rosemary, parsley and oregano. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

With a sharp knife, open the piquillo peppers and split into into 2 pieces (they will look like two triangles, given the shape of the peppers). Sauté them in 1 Tbs olive oil, about 1 minute or less per side. Add them to the vinaigrette.

On a grill pan, toast the slices of bread on medium-high heat until charred marks form, about 2 minutes per side.

To serve, place 2 slices of eggplant on each piece of toast, and top with a spoonful of the vinaigrette, making sure you catch a couple pieces of piquillo pepper.