Escalivade

I love to check out what other people are buying at the grocery store.

I know that most (read: normal) people would rather be doing their taxes, watching Paris Hilton speak about politics, listening to the Hamster Dance song on repeat… anything aside from waiting for the cashier to ring up their purchases, but I honestly do love it. It might be the people-watcher in me, but I think that looking to see what other people are buying is fascinating.

What is that man going to do, for example, with one orange, a tiny bottle of heavy cream, and a can of olives? Does that woman eat microwave pizza every night, or is she stocking up for the apocalypse? How many people are in that man’s family that he has to buy 20 pork chops? And how much did that scraggly, bloodshot young man smoke that he needs a frozen Mars bar, a family-sized bag of tortilla chips, a two-liter bottle of Coke and a bag of Carambars to come back down?

If someone were as interested as I am in what is passing in front of them on the conveyor belt to check out my purchases as of late, they would probably think I was a vegetarian: I’m not, and I haven’t been since 2005 (and even if I were, I doubt that I would have been able to keep it up in Spain, land of amazing seafood, incredible ham, and general use of pork products everywhere you look). But when I go shopping, I look like the poster child for that old-school food pyramid… the one I grew up with that actually looks like a pyramid, I mean.

This week, for example, as I emptied my shopping basket behind one woman’s selection of various sorts of ham, dry cereal and meal replacement bars and in front of a gentleman’s two bottles of dry white wine, one bottle of detergent and small loaf of seeded bread, I wondered what people would think of me? Ten pear-shaped tomatoes and three containers of cherry tomatoes, a bag each of apples and pears, a shrink-wrappd styrofoam flat of white button mushrooms, six cans of tuna, a bottle of tomate frito, a head of broccoli, two bags of grated carrots, a box of mushroom linguine and three glass jars of lima beans. You’d think I never ate a thing aside from vegetables… and canned tuna.

And while that’s not true (I just ventured into the world of pintxos making with a native Donostian chef last night, where everything was deep-fried, pork producty deliciousness), there is something to be said for filling your belly entirely with vegetables, for getting that satisfied feeling after having eaten just a touch too much, and knowing that all you’ve eaten is carrots and cucumber.

The urge to binge-eat out of the produce drawer starts to leave me as the weather gets cooler, but even though it’s been raining here–the skies opening and soaking you in five seconds or less–I’m still making meals out of tomatoes and lima beans and carrying around more apples in my purse than Johnny Appleseed.

This dish is typically Catalan–a different part of Spain, and something that I learned to make in Paziols (also in Catalogne/Cataloña). Summer vegetables are gathered and roasted with garlic and olive oil and then bathed in a simple vinaigrette made from Banyuls vinegar and fresh herbs. This is one of those dishes that is so much more than a sum of its parts, and it’s perfect for people like me, who make their meals entirely from vegetables.

Escalivade

250 g (1/2 lb.) tomatoes
250 g (1/2 lb.) eggplant
300 g (2/3 lb.) zucchini
300 g (2/3 lb.) red pepper
200 g (a bit less than 1/2 lb.) green pepper
200 g (a bit less than 1/2 lb.) yellow pepper
200 g (a bit less than 1/2 lb.) orange pepper
1 onion
3-4 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp. fresh chives
4 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 small shallots, minced
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
freshly cracked black pepper
2-3 Tbsp. Banyuls vinegar, or good wine vinegar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Wash and dry the vegetables. Seed the peppers and slice them into strips. Slice the eggplants and zucchini into strips of about the same size. Cut the tomatoes and onions into rounds.

Organize the vegetables in a baking dish any way you like (traditionally, you keep the like vegetables together, which makes for a prettier presentation.)

Dress the top of the dish with one tablespoon of the olive oil, and place the entire thing in the oven to roast for 30-40 minutes. Every so often, add a bit of water to the dish to keep the vegetables from burning.

When everything is cooked, allow to cool for a few minutes before removing the skins of the peppers. (Note: I don’t always do this step.)

Add the rest of the olive oil, the vinegar, the garlic, the shallots, the chives, the thyme and the pepper.