Recipe Source: This recipe comes from a book called The Food of Italy - Region by Region, by Claudia Roden (page 309). The book is one of the best summaries of Italian regional cooking that I've found. It has a chapter on every region which starts with a general overview of the regional cuisine and finishes with local recipes from the region in question. On my travels around Italy I've read each region's chapter as I've travelled through them, and the book has been very much "on the money".

I made this recipe whilst I was in Sardinia in May 2005 and it was a big success. It's great as part of an antipasti, or just on bread either alone or with other tasty goodies. This recipe is very similar to one that my grandfather from Piedmont in northern Italy used to make. The main differences with the one my grandfather made is that the only herb he used was sage, and he cooked his eggplant in a frying pan of olive oil. Sometimes he cooked the slices plain, but other times he would coat them in seasoned flour then beaten egg and finally breadcrumbs before cooking them. My grandfather never used olive oil in the dressing for this dish, as he'd already used it to cook the eggplant slices.

The most important thing to remember when cooking this dish is that the cooked eggplant slices need to be dressed as soon as they come off the heat, and then the dish needs to be covered immediately. This applies to each batch of slices as it comes off the cooker.

This dish needs to be made at least 12 hours, if not a couple of days before it is eaten. You need a wide dish with a flat bottom and a lid to stack the cooked eggplant into. You also need a grill over hot charcoal embers. Using charcoal makes a big difference to the taste of the dish, but if you don't have access to that type of grill, just use a gas bbq grill.

Ingredients
Eggplant (aubergine), cut into round slices of about ½cm - 1cm thick
Extra virgin olive oil
Garlic cloves, peeled and very finely sliced
A few sprigs of fresh oregano, strip the leaves off and roughly chop them
A few sprigs of mint, strip the leaves off and roughly chop them
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
If you have time, sprinkle the eggplant with salt and leave it to stand for 1 hour, then pat the fluid that accumulates off with a paper towel.

Grill the eggplant in batches over hot charcoal embers, turning them once on a lightly oiled grill, until they are brown on both sides and soft all the way through.

When each batch of eggplant is cooked, place it layer by layer into the wide bottom dish. On the top of every layer, sprinkle a few slices of garlic, a sprinkle chopped herbs, a small drizzle of vinegar and a bigger drizzle of olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Leave the dish to stand for at least 12 hours before serving cold.

Note: Once or twice per day for the first two days (if it lasts that long), I often invert a matching dish over the finished eggplant pickle and quickly turn the pair of dishes upside down. This will put the pickle in a second dish, but upside down. As the vinegar will always sink to the bottom, this gives a more even flavour to the pickle.