Ajvar: Red Pepper and Eggplant Spread

Ajvar: the world-famous Balkan roasted red pepper and eggplant relish. Smokey, deep, rich. Unforgettable.

(BOSANSKI)

Even if you know very little about Balkan cuisine, you probably heard someone mention, ajvar (pronounced “AY-vahr”).

Ajvar is a relish (spread, preserve) made primarily with eggplants and red, bull’s horn sweet peppers, called so due to their long, thick, pointy appearance reminiscent of a horn.

These peppers are known as “roge” in the region. You may come across them under the name of  Italian “corno di toro” – bull’s horn – peppers. (Don’t confuse them with hot cow horn peppers.)

Your best bet is to look for these peppers at the farmer’s market. If you can’t find them, go for regular bell peppers. They must be the red kind though.

(Some recipes call for more ingredients like garlic and chillies.)

Ajvar’s sometimes referred to as chutney. But every chutney I’ve ever had had been sweet. Like jam or marmalade. And while ajvar can, and often does have sweet undertones, it more closely falls under the relish or spread category.

A relish is defined as a condiment made by cooking, pickling, or chopping a fruit or a vegetable. However, this definition is too simplified for ajvar.

For one, when we think of relish, most of us think chopped pickles in little bags at fast food places. (My dad loved relish. He used to ask for it at McDonald’s. Except they rarely had it at McDonald’s. They’d get annoyed. He’d get upset. His next step was to ask for a Pepsi. Then the war was really on.)

Secondly, a condiment is a sauce added to food to impart a flavor. Certainly ajvar can be, sometimes is, added to food to enhance its flavor. But ajvar is also independent.

It doesn’t need anything to enhance it, nor does it need to enhance anything. It’s most flavorful, most rich when spread in a thick layer on a piece of homemade bread. You can’t do the same with sauces or salsas.

As evident, I’m not completely sold on categorizing ajvar.

One prepares ajvar by first roasting eggplants and peppers, and then peeling, chopping, and finally cooking them. Industrial ajvar (store ajvar) usually consists of ingredients which have only been cooked. Don’t eat this kind.

I’d hate for you to miss out on its real taste.

On its richness, and smokiness. On all the effort peppers and eggplants gave roasting in the oven. On all the time that goes into preparation, returned tenfold in that final moment when, after spending several hours with only one goal in mind, you understand you just may have achieved your highest culinary point as of yet.

If you still decide to go with a store brand, there are two things you can do.

One is to look for the Baš Ajvar brand. (This is not an advertisement.) It’s the best industrial ajvar although their quality declined in the past few years. What surprised me is that Baš Ajvar exported to the US is better than the one in Sarajevo stores.

It must be the Nutella effect. Did you know there are different quality Nutellas? Nutella you buy in Germany is better than the one you buy in Serbia for example. (It makes you a disappointed with humanity to find these things out.)

Secondly you can buy any ajvar and improve it.

A lot of people do it this way. They get several jars of ajvar and smaller quantities of peppers and eggplant. Then they roast peppers and eggplants, peel them, chop them, and cook everything together with the store ajvar. (I’ll write up a recipe for this sometime.) This is the best way to make ajvar and control its taste without having to do it from scratch.

It’s hard to pinpoint where ajvar originated, as it’s made all over ex-Yugoslavia. If you want my advice, don’t ask people from the Balkans where things come from. Especially regarding something as basic as ajvar, the spread for which each family has a preparation technique spanning over generations.

(A digression. I watched a documentary about Danes being happiest people in the world. They asked someone from Denmark why they thought this was so. The person said it was because everyone belongs to a club of some kind. 

“If a few people got stuck in an elevator for twenty minutes together, they’d probably come out having formed a club for people who get stuck in elevators,” they said.

On the other end of the spectrum we have people from different ex-Yu countries, who, if stuck on an elevator together, wouldn’t all come out alive. Of course, this changes when you take them away from the Balkans. In other countries, they’re brothers.)

Today’s recipe for ajvar is my mom’s.

The process is extensive. You’ll need a weekend to do it. It’s easiest to work over two days. For example, start on Friday evening, work into the night, and continue the following day until finished.

I don’t recommend you go the easy way.

Why? Because the quantity of ingredients is too small to make real ajvar.

If you take anything from this article let it be this: you can’t make fantastic ajvar with five peppers and an eggplant!

Food cooked in large quantities tends to be better. Why the food made at a scout summer camp, or in the army is better I don’t know. Because of the huge pot in which it simmers for hours? Or something about preparing a larger quantity of ingredients all at once that makes it just right? It just is.

By the way, I chose mom’s recipe because her ajvar tastes better than any other I’ve tried. Hundreds of people agree. If you make it her way, you’ll never make it any other way again.

She cooks it longer. It’s sweeter than most, has a smooth, consistent spreading quality, and is a deeper, darker orange. (When buying ajvar, one giveaway it’s not particularly good is if it’s bright orange.)

Also, mom’s ajvar does not contain garlic, while many ajvar recipes do.

Garlic is like a dear friend you don’t send an invite for every occasion. To your ajvar jar, for one. It overpowers it and it doesn’t keep well.

It’s best if ajvar making becomes a family affair. Get everyone involved. You’ll make wonderful memories this way.

It’s the memories of the falls before the war which inspired me to make ajvar with mom this year. A lot of change affected our family over recent years. We experienced many losses. One of them dad.

Profound loss led us to discover importance of traditions. Rituals which roll on after we’re gone. For you it may be a book which when passed on to new generations, will be read by someone who by that very act will be getting to know you, the long gone relative who once pondered the same thoughts.

A tradition can also be making ajvar together each year, even if the family changed by circumstances beyond control.

Back before the war, every fall there was a period of time when moms and grandmas prepared zimnica; zima meaning the winter, and zimnica being the food for the winter. It was a way to conserve things we couldn’t get to the following few months. It generally consisted of fruit and vegetables preserved, cooked, and fermented.

In that period you couldn’t find strawberries in the store all year long. You ate them fresh in late spring, and in ice creams and desserts in the summer. During fall and winter, strawberries came as marmalades, jams and preserves.

The time for preparation, death, rebirth and bloom. Changing of the seasons meant witnessing nature’s winter death and spring rebirth. There was the time to sow and the time to reap.

Going back to zimnica, it also meant preparing ajvar. Going to the large farmer’s market, and picking up bright red, plump, bull’s horn peppers that came in colorful threaded bags from which peppers protruded out like curious spectators. We’d pick out indigo, fat eggplants too, and the eggplants and peppers got acquainted in the car on the ride back home.

Then started the adventure that would finish up in small jars of ajvar, stacked on the kitchen counter like Tetris. The aroma of ajvar was one of comfort, of cooking, of a warm and inviting home, where good people lived.

A home, where no matter how cold it was outside, there was no winter.

BLB APPROVED AJVAR RECIPES AROUND ON THE WEB

I’m a big fan of travel blogs. I’m an even bigger fan of bloggers who travel for food and pleasure. Anthony and Leila from recipehunters do exactly that! They pick a place and then immerse themselves in local food and customs.

They did a great ajvar recipe  when they visited Imotski in Croatia. I am linking to it because the preparation method is different. Peppers and eggplant aren’t roasted but are cooked, first in water then oil.

However you can immediately see by looking at it that it’s good ajvar.  Trust me, once you make ajvar few seasons in a row you’ll be able to recognize how good it is just by sneaking a peek.  So if you’re not into roasting, theirs is an excellent ajvar option for you.

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