Romanian Vegetable Spread-Zacusca

This Romanian vegetable spread-Zacusca, as we call it in Romanian,  is something I would make every year at the end of the summer. It combines roasted eggplant, roasted peppers, fresh tomato juice or paste, and onions, all slowly cooked to perfection.

I actually can it in jars and consume it during the winter. We serve it as an appetizer, but we also eat it on slices of fresh bread as a meal.

You can create a delicious platter with your favorite cheese, cold cuts, fresh red onion, and the vegetable spread zacusca, like in the picture below.

This vegetable spread is a delicious way to preserve vegetables from the garden and taste summer when the cold weather arrives.

Most Eastern European countries have a version of this spread. In some countries, the spread has more peppers and no eggplants. In other countries, they use more tomatoes and fewer peppers.

There are even variations of this Zacusca in Romania, where eggplants are replaced with white beans, zucchini, and sometimes mushrooms.

Some recipes also have carrots, parsley root, or celeriac to give the spread a little sweetness. The eggplant version is the most loved and popular, and this is what we will make today.

This Romanian vegetable spread- Zacusta, requires a little bit of work. I am not going to lie to you, but it takes some time to make, and only the dedicated one will put the effort and the work into making delicious Zacusca.

In the past, this spread was a way of surviving in the winter, as we did not have fresh vegetables like we have today in the stores all year round.

As some Americans might remember, canning was popular too before industrialization, and most people knew how to do it.

It is a shame that we don't do the canning more often. It saves money, trips to the store, and provides nutritious food for the entire family. At least you know what is in that food, right?

The vegetable spread uses roasted vegetables, so I will explain how to prepare them first. We will start with the eggplants because they are the heart and star of this spread.

How to cook the eggplants for this recipe?

There are different ways to cook eggplants. I used them all, and they all work. It all depends on whatever your possibilities are and the time of year.

Here is an extensive article about cooking eggplants to prepare them for your dips, salads, or zacusca.

My favorite way of cooking eggplants for this spread is grilling them on a fire grill, but please go to the article I was telling you about because it will teach you some other methods when you don't have access to a fire grill.

The eggplant salad made with grilled eggplants will taste really smoky and delicious! Here is another recipe that has roasted peppers also.

How to prepare the flesh of the eggplant for the next step:

After grilling, roasting, or baking the eggplants, let them cool, then carefully remove all the skin.

Place the eggplants in a strainer and drain the juices out for about half an hour to one hour. This step will remove the juice from the eggplant that is supposed to be bitter.

Chop the eggplants on a wooden board with a special wooden/plastic knife made especially for this purpose (if you are Romanian and have one, of course) or with a regular knife.

I have a special plastic knife, inherited from my mom, specially designed for chopping eggplants.

A popular belief was that you should not touch the eggplants with metal because the eggplants would oxidize and the salad would not have a pretty color.

I am not sure if this is true or not. In my opinion, using a regular knife should be ok. Most knives today are stainless steel.

You could process the eggplants in the food processor. The salad will then have more like a spread texture, which is delicious but not very authentic.

I prefer to chop the salad rather roughly so that I have something to chew here and there, but the degree of chopping is totally up to you.

After you are done with this step, set the eggplants aside and go to the next step.

How to grill peppers:

Peppers are best roasted directly on an open fire. A wood grill is a perfect way to use but directly on a gas fire stove is perfectly acceptable.

Grill them until the skin is black and blistered. Remove them, let them cool a little bit so you can handle them, then peel off the skin and place them on a plate.

Or do it like in Mexico, where cooking with different peppers is the core of the cuisine: Place the charred peppers in a big bowl or pot and cover them with a lid for a few minutes.

The peppers will sweat, and the skin will come off very fast and easily.

Use a little bit of water to wash your hands while you peel the peppers.

It makes your life easier.

Remove the seeds and cut the peppers into thin slices or chop them small, as you like. Set aside.

How To Assemble and Make the Vegetable Spread- Zacusca:

First, this vegetable spread is made in large pans that have a large surface for the liquids to evaporate. This way, the spread will be thicker and more delicious, not soupy.

The pan sits on the stove on lower heat and needs to be supervised at all times. You also need to stir in the pan most of the time to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom.

We start with the onions by slicing them Julienne. Any kind of onion is fine. I used red, but sometimes I use sweet onion or white, or even a mixture of them. It all depends on what I find in the store.

In a big pan, place the oil and heat it up on the stove on medium heat. Add the sliced onions and cook them slowly on medium-low heat.

Stir once in a while and let them cook until they become translucent.

Add salt and pepper. Lots of pepper, as you have a large amount of onions.

The thing is that I love cooked onions, so at this point, when the onions are translucent, I love stealing a few tablespoons from the pan and eating them o slices of bread with salt and pepper!

It is definitely my favorite time of the year!

When you get to this step, add the roasted peppers, 

chopped eggplant and stir again.

Add bay leaves and, finally, the tomato sauce.

In the summer, I use tomatoes from the Farmer Market that I put in the food processor and make the sauce.

If I make this spread late in the fall, when tomatoes are not so great anymore, I buy the tomato sauce or paste and use it the same.

This vegetable mixture is now going to cook slowly on the stove for about an hour while I constantly stir so it doesn't stick to the bottom. After an hour, I taste for salt and pepper.

At this point, everything goes in the oven for about two hours at 350F/180C. It is ready when it becomes thicker, and the oil floats on top of the vegetables. While the spread is in the oven, I sterilize the jars. 

The jars and the vegetable spread have to be hot when you fill the jars. I seal them and flip them upside down.

I cover all the jars with a blanket and let them cool down. The next day I preheat the oven to 215F/100C and place the jars upside down on a baking tray inside the oven.

I shut off the oven and leave the jars inside without opening the oven until they cool completely.

I remove them from the oven, label them and place them in a cool pantry for later use. The spread is good until summer if you don't finish the jars earlier.

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We like opening the first jar in November, and I usually send jars with this spread to my daughter, who doesn't live in the same city as us.

Or she comes to visit and leaves with a full suitcase of them.

We like the spread as an appetizer, as I already said earlier, but we also like to take it to work or for lunch.

It could also be a light dinner, next to a few slices of good bread or crackers,  cold cuts, or good cheese, your favorite. It is the perfect food.

Enjoy!