Vegetable adjab sandalwood for the winter in jars - Georgian recipe

How can you please yourself with this food in winter, when eggplants are expensive and they are not grown in open ground? This preparation recipe will be useful for those who want to open a jar in winter and simply “finish” ajab sandalwood by adding the missing ingredients.

I would immediately like to make some very important clarifications about what the classic preparation for adjab sandalwood is. There are a huge number of homemade recipes for this dish on the Internet, and do they contain rice and carrots? Under no circumstances should we add either the first or the second. Classic ajab sandalwood: eggplant, bell pepper, chili pepper, tomatoes, onion, parsley, cilantro and potatoes. From all of the above, excluding potatoes, we will make a semi-finished product of this delicious dish at home.

The ratio of eggplants to other products is approximately one to four, that is, if we take 4 kilos of eggplants, then we need one kilogram of bell peppers and onions (in equal proportions). There should be a lot of onions in this dish! Greens and chili peppers weigh very little, we will not take their weight into account.

How to prepare ajab sandalwood for the winter

We start preparing the preparation by carefully cutting off the skin of the eggplants, putting them in a bowl and sprinkle them well with salt, leaving for a couple of hours so that the salt draws out the unpleasant and harmful bitterness from the eggplants.

Already when we directly prepare the preparation, the eggplants need to be squeezed very well, even if they look unpresentable, but almost all the bitterness will go away from them.

While the little blue ones are releasing their bitterness, let’s start with the tomatoes. We put them in a deep bowl, pour boiling water over them, after about ten minutes we drain the water and remove the skin from them. The boiling water we poured over the tomatoes will allow us to easily peel them. We randomly cut the peeled tomatoes into small pieces and put them on the bottom of the saucepan in which we will cook our winter preparation for ajab sandalwood.

The onion needs to be cut into small cubes, the bell pepper into thin strips, so it will look nice when prepared in jars. We take green and red peppers (yellow ones lose color when canned and are not so beautiful).

We use only white onions, never pink (pink will turn an unpleasant gray color and it will be harsh). Over low heat in a frying pan, adding vegetable oil, simmer the onion and pepper until softened.

As soon as the eggplants are squeezed out, we put them in a saucepan with the tomatoes, and add the stewed onions and bell peppers.

The chili pepper is cut into thin rings (with seeds if you like it “hot”) and also thrown into the pan.

Over very low heat, constantly stirring gently, cook this mixture until the eggplant is completely soft. We use them as a guideline for cooking time.

Add finely chopped parsley and cilantro, boil for a minute or two.

When hot, place in jars, immediately set it to sterilization (about half an hour).

Before rolling up the lids on the jars of our preparation, you need to add a few drops of vinegar essence, this is important! This is an additional protection so that our ajab sandalwood does not deteriorate in winter. There is no need to salt, the salt that we sprinkled on the eggplants at the very beginning has been partially absorbed and is quite enough for storage.

Preparing this preparation is the first step to pampering yourself with ajab sandalwood in winter. The second, important point is the storage of our conservation. Canned eggplants are very capricious in terms of storage and, along with impeccable cleanliness during preparation, it is important that such preparations need to be stored in a cool place and completely inaccessible to daylight. The best place would be a cellar or a special closet in the darkest and coolest place in the house.

Well, now about how to cook adjab sandalwood in Georgian style in winter. To do this, you just need to boil the potatoes, cut into small cubes. After draining the water, add our homemade preparations to it, bring it all to a boil, add salt to your taste. We eat the dish hot or cold, whichever you prefer. It’s snowing outside, it’s cold, and we are enjoying a wonderful and healthy Georgian summer dish!