Mediterranean vegetables over the coals

I love potato salad and I love braai broodjies…but sometimes you want something different, something fresh as a side dish with your braai.

I saw something on a Jamie Oliver show last week (I’ve never been the biggest Jamie fan but this looked so good that I decided to try it) which I adapted a bit to come up with this deliciously fresh & light but tasty Mediterranean vegetable salad.

Here is how it unfolded:

Mise en Place

I first made the dressing to drizzle over the salad later on. I wanted to give the flavours from all the fresh herbs time to release into the dressing which is why I did this first.

Use whatever herbs you like, I used the herbs that I had available which were parsley, basil, chives and dill – proud to say that most of them come from my own garden!

I finely chopped the herbs as well as a clove of garlic. In a mixing bowl I added olive oil and balsamic vinegar to the herbs, gave it a good stir and left it to rest while I started with the vegetables.

Chopped herbs

In hindsight I think something with a bit of a kick would be a great addition to the dressing. Dried chili flakes perhaps.

The vegetables I used were: 1 large aubergine, a couple of baby marrows, a few patty pans, a robot of sweet peppers and 2 red onions.

I cut the patty pans in half, sliced the baby marrows into strips (cut lengthwise about 4-5mm thick), sliced the aubergine into roughly 1cm discs and finally sliced the onions into slightly thicker discs than the aubergine.

Next step is to roast these over the coals.

So wood or charcoal?

It much easier to manage the heat and to get a consistent heat across the grill with charcoal so it’s definitely the easier option.

I had a wood fire and even though it was difficult to control the heat and to spread the heat evenly underneath the veggies that smoky taste that the wood fire gives to the vegetables is worth it! If you are planning to still braai your meat on the same fire you’ll need some serious hardehout that will last long enough to roast the vegetables and the meat – just something to keep in mind.

I’ll get to the sweet peppers in a minute but all the other vegetables should be roasted until they start turning brown on the outside by which time they should be semi-cooked. I drizzled some olive oil over the aubergine cutlets after every turn to avoid them drying out too much.

The peppers go on the grill whole as they are. Turn them every few minutes and turn them upright every now and again as well to also roast the bottom and top of the peppers. If they turn charcoal black on the outside don’t worry you didn’t overdo it, that is actually what you want!

An unusual sight...a braai with no meat?

My heat was a little bit low so on the photo mine doesn’t look black but you can see that the outside skins started to come off. When your peppers are charcoaled on the outside I assure you the skins are loose and you can take them off the heat.

Leave them to cool for a few minutes until you can handle them with your hands. Now peel of the skins and you are left with just the fleshy part. Then cut them open and remove the stem and all the seeds and slice them into strips.

Peeling off the pepper skins

Toss all the vegetables into a serving bowl mixing in the dressing prepared earlier. You can also add salt, pepper or any other spices keeping in mind that none of the vegetables have been salted so far.

Adding the salad dressing

Get your hands dirty!

This is perfect served at room temperature so I put it aside at this point and started with the meat. By the time the meat was finished the salad had enough time to cool off and to mix with the herbs.

The colours...

A succulent medium rib-eye steak with sweet mustard sauce accompanied by the colourful veggies

This is actually a perfect summer dish and even though it feels like winter is upon us there might still be a couple of sunny days left to serve this with your next braai!