Vegan Vinete Dip – Vegan Eggplant Recipes (Romanian vinete)

Hey there, friends and vegans and vegan friends! I hope your week is off to a good start because I feel as if I’m already behind on this week and it’s just Hump Day!

What’s Up With Me?
I’m busy working for my clients as well as making excellent progress on book 2 in my Emerald Creek series, which is a small town contemporary romance series. It’s keeping me busy and I’m hard at work, which is why today’s episode is a quick and easy eggplant dip.

What Is Vinete?
The easy answer is that vinete is the Romanian word for eggplant. The more complicated answer is that really not all that complicated. Vinete is an eggplant dip, or more accurately salata de vinete is an eggplant dip that is almost always vegan.

This dip was my first foray into the world of eggplant. I’ve talked plenty about my love-hate relationship with this vegetable, until it shifted into mild tolerance and then like in certain circumstances. But it was this dish that made me realize that eggplant wasn’t as gross as I always thought it was.

The best part about this vegan eggplant dip? It isn’t difficult to make and it doesn’t require a long list of ingredients.

So if you like eggplant or you want to try a new eggplant recipe, keep reading…

Kitchen Tools:

*Cutting board
*Kitchen knife
*Mixing bowl

Ingredients:

*Eggplant
*Vegan mayo
*Spicy mustard
*Sunflower oil (optional)
*Shallot
*Lemon juice
*Chopped fresh parsley

Instructions:

*Roast the eggplant. Every single person that I know here in Romania cooks the eggplant over an open flame. I have an electric stove which means that’s not an option for me and I haven’t enjoyed playing with fire since I was thirteen years old so I cut it in half and cooked it in the oven face down on 200C for about 20 minutes. The eggplant was still firm but fully cooked when I removed it from the oven.

*Let the eggplant cool so that you can handle it with your bare hands.

*Dice the shallot (or onion) as finely as you can. I couldn’t find any shallots so I pickled a small red onion to tamp down on the onion-y flavor. That is just a preference for me because a few of the times I’ve had vinete and didn’t like it, was because the onion taste was overpowering.

*Scoop out the inside, discarding the beautiful aubergine skin.

*Grab your kitchen knife and chop the crap out of the eggplant until it is diced up, almost minced. You can use a food processor or a blender but that will turn this into more of a baba ghanoush instead of a Romanian eggplant dip.

*Place eggplant in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients, along with salt and white pepper. Stir until well combined and taste, adding more seasoning as necessary.

*Eat like Romanians by simply slathering it on bread as a starter to any meal.

**Optional: Serve with crackers, veggie sticks or if you’re my hubs, with a spoon!**

And that’s it, a quick and easy vegan dip recipe you can break out for parties, or as a simple toast topper when you don’t have time to do a lot in the kitchen. It’s delicious, healthy and easy to make.

What more do you need? Oh, right, an icy cold beer!

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Get more Vegan Eggplant recipes below!

*Eggplant Ragout
*Eggplant Buddha Bowl
*Low-key Vegan Eggplant Parm
*Crispy Eggplant Fries