Charred Pepper and Eggplant Escalivada Toast with Goat Cheese
Red peppers and eggplant blistered under the broiler, torn into strips and dressed with garlic, vinegar, and smoked paprika, piled onto thick toast smeared with cold goat cheese.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
I learned this from a plate of escalivada in a bar in Girona, where it arrived at room temperature with a small pile of bread beside it and nothing else on the table. The traditional version buries whole vegetables in embers for an hour, which is wonderful and completely useless on a Tuesday. Cutting the peppers into quarters and the eggplant into rounds and running them under a hot broiler gets you most of the way there in under twenty minutes, because a broiler is just a fire pointed downward. What you want is skin that blackens and blisters while the flesh underneath goes soft enough to tear with your fingers.
It eats the way good bar food eats, which is to say messy and worth the mess. The vegetables give up a startling amount of sweet red juice once they sit in the vinegar and garlic, and half the reason for putting them on toast is to have something to catch it. The goat cheese goes on cold and stays intact under the warm vegetables, so you get a cool tangy layer against the smoke. Arugula on top brings a peppery bite that keeps the whole thing from reading as one long sweet note, and the last inch of bread is always the best inch.
Lunch has to come out of what is already in the house sometimes, and this is how. Peppers, an eggplant, an onion, and the end of a loaf are not a shopping trip. It also improves on the counter, so I often broil the vegetables in the morning and leave them in their dressing until noon, which makes the assembly a two minute job. Late summer is the obvious season, when peppers are cheap and eggplants are heavy for their size, but it holds up in February with whatever the store has.
Ingredients
- 3 large red bell peppers (about 14 oz), quartered lengthwise and seeded
- 1 medium eggplant (about 12 oz), cut into 1/2-inch rounds
- 4 thick slices whole grain country bread (about 9 oz total)
- 1 medium red onion, cut into 1/2-inch wedges through the root
- 3 1/2 tbsp olive oil, divided
- 2 oz soft goat cheese, at room temperature
- 5 cloves garlic, 4 thinly sliced and 1 halved for rubbing the toast
- 2 cups arugula, loosely packed
- 1 tbsp cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 1 1/2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
- 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano, crumbled between your fingers
- 3/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Heat the broiler and load the pan: Set an oven rack about six inches under the broiler element and heat it on high. Toss the pepper quarters, eggplant rounds, and onion wedges with 2 tbsp of the olive oil, the salt, and the black pepper, and spread them in one layer on a rimmed sheet pan with the peppers skin side up. Crowding is what makes vegetables steam, so use two pans if one looks tight.
- Blister the vegetables: Broil for 10 to 12 minutes without turning, until the pepper skins are blackened in wide patches and puffed away from the flesh. Pull the pan, turn the eggplant and onion, and give them 4 to 6 minutes more, until the eggplant rounds are collapsed and deeply browned and the onion edges have gone dark and floppy.
- Dress them while they are hot: Slide everything into a bowl and cover it for two minutes so the steam loosens the pepper skins, then pull the skins off with your fingers and tear the peppers lengthwise into finger-wide strips. Add the sliced garlic, cider vinegar, smoked paprika, oregano, and the remaining 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil, and turn it all over gently. The garlic softens in the residual heat and the juices go red and glossy.
- Toast the bread and rub it: Toast the bread slices until they are firm and dry at the surface and just starting to color, either under the same broiler for a minute a side or in a dry skillet. While each slice is still hot, rub the cut face of the halved garlic clove across it, which leaves the barest coat of garlic and takes about three seconds per slice.
- Build the toasts: Spread the goat cheese over the warm toast in a thick, uneven layer, then pile the vegetables on with a slotted spoon so they hold together on the bread. Spoon a little of the pooled juice over each one, scatter the parsley and arugula on top, and eat them right away while the bread still has some snap under the softness.
Variations
- Catalan tomato rub: Halve a ripe tomato and rub the cut side hard across the toasted bread before the cheese goes on, so the pulp catches in the crumb.
- Zucchini and fennel: Add a sliced zucchini and a few wedges of fennel to the sheet pan, both of which blister on the same schedule as the eggplant.
- Chile and cumin: Swap half the smoked paprika for a teaspoon of ground cumin and add a pinch of cayenne to the dressing for a warmer, more North African plate.
- White bean smash: Mash half a can of drained and rinsed cannellini beans with a little of the pepper juice and spread it under the vegetables in place of the cheese.
Storage & Leftovers
The dressed vegetables keep five days in a sealed container in the refrigerator and get better for the first two, since the garlic and vinegar work their way into the pepper strips. Store them separately from the bread and the cheese, and let them come back to room temperature before you use them, because cold flattens the smoke.
Do not build the toasts ahead. Bread under wet vegetables turns to paste within twenty minutes, and the pleasure here is the contrast between the crisp surface of the toast and the soft pile on top. Toast fresh slices each time, which takes two minutes.
The vegetables freeze for up to three months in a flat sealed bag, though they come back softer than they went in. Thaw them in the refrigerator overnight, drain off any water that separates, and refresh them with a splash of vinegar and a little olive oil before serving.
Notes & Tips
- Peppers skin side up, always: The skin has to face the element to blister, and the flesh underneath steams itself soft while that happens. Turned the other way you get pale, floppy peppers that will not peel.
- Cut the eggplant thick: Half-inch rounds hold together and collapse into something creamy. Thin slices dry out and go leathery under a broiler that hot.
- Cover the hot bowl: Two minutes under a plate traps the steam and loosens every skin at once, which turns peeling from a chore into a thirty second job.
- Dress them warm: Warm vegetables pull in the vinegar and garlic the way cold ones never will. This is the single step that makes the dish taste like it sat around all afternoon.
- Toast at the last minute: The whole structure depends on a dry, firm surface under a wet topping. Toast made an hour early goes soft on the plate before anyone picks it up.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The peppers, the eggplant, and the bread are doing three separate jobs here. The peppers bring the sweetness and most of the juice, the eggplant gives the pile its soft body and its fiber, and a thick slice of whole grain bread underneath is what turns a bowl of vegetables into lunch.
- Red bell peppers get sweeter and redder the longer they stay on the plant, and that late ripening is where their vitamin C and their orange-red carotenoids come from. Charring concentrates the sugars without touching that color, which is why the strips taste almost jammy.
- Eggplant is mostly water held in a spongy structure, so it drinks up olive oil and then collapses into something creamy, and its skin carries the purple anthocyanins along with a good share of the fiber. Leave the skin on and you keep both.
- Goat cheese spread cold against warm vegetables gives you the tang and the calcium in the same bite, and because it is assertive, a couple of ounces flavors four large slices of toast.
- Smoked paprika, dried oregano, and a spoonful of cider vinegar are what make this taste like it came from a bar in Catalonia. The vinegar goes on while the vegetables are still hot, so the acid works into them rather than sitting on top, and it is the reason the last bite tastes as bright as the first.
- As you eat, notice how the smoke arrives first and the sweetness of the peppers comes in behind it, and give yourself long enough at the table to feel the bread settle before you decide whether you want another slice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use jarred roasted peppers to save time?
You can, and it cuts the recipe to about ten minutes, but drain and pat them dry first because the brine they sit in is assertive. You will still want to broil the eggplant and onion, since those two are where most of the smoke and body come from.
My pepper skins would not come off. What went wrong?
They were not blackened enough. The skin has to blister and puff away from the flesh before it will release, and that means leaving them under the element longer than feels comfortable. Wide black patches are the signal, and covering the hot bowl for a couple of minutes does the rest.
What bread works best?
A sturdy country loaf with an open crumb and a real crust, cut thick. Sandwich bread collapses under the weight of the vegetables. If your loaf is a day or two old, so much the better, since drier bread drinks the juices without going limp.
Can I make it without the goat cheese?
Yes, and it is closer to the original that way. Rub the toast with a halved tomato instead, the way they do in Catalonia, then add an extra drizzle of olive oil and a little more parsley so the bread still has something rich to hold on to.