1. Heat the oven up to 180º. Wash and dry all the ingredients. Put the peppers, aubergines, tomatoes and onions (all whole) in an oven dish or on the oven tray. Put them in the oven. Wrap the potatoes up in foil and put them in the oven too. Leave for approximately one and a half hours to roast. Turn them over once.

2. When they are roasted, take the vegetables out and peel all of them (except the potatoes). Some people find it easier to peel red peppers by hand. It is importante to peel them as soon as they are taken out of the oven - if they are left too long to cool, the skin may cling onto the peppers. Cut the tops off the aubergines and red peppers.

3. Remove the little pips from inside the red peppers, and cut the peppers and aubergines into long strips. Slice the onion and tomato. Keep all ingredients separate and add salt, pepper, a few drops of vinager and a generous amount of olive oil.

4. Cut the baked potatoes, empty the skins, cut them up, add olive oil and salt and pepper.

5. Put all the ingredients on a serving dish (don't mix them up - make individual portions of each vegetable). Sprinkle the chopped garlic over the whole dish, season with salt and pepper (and ground cumin or whole cumin seeds if you wish) and pour some more olive oil and vinager over if required.

 

Use quality products:

• Use virgin olive oil if possible
• Joaquina prefers to use the stripey kind of aubergines for this recipie. If you can't find any, use normal ones.
• Leave the skin on the onion too so that it will be nice and moist inside once cooked.

 

Varieties / Tips:

• There are lots of varieties of escalibada. One is to just use red peppers, cook and slice as above, sprinkle them with chopped garlic and salt and cover them in olive oil. Or to use just red peppers and aubergines. Some people serve escalibada with dried cod or tinned tuna.
• In Murcia people add a little cumin to their red pepper salad. You can use ground cumin if you don't like crunching the seeds.
• Even though you aren's supposed to mix all the ingredients up, you can if you want to and the result is just as delicious even if the presentation isn't as impressive.
• Roasted red pepper salad keeps very well for a few days in the fridge. If you are going to serve escabilada at a dinner party, you can make it the day before if you want - some people think it is even more delicious if the flavours have been allowed to mix with eachother for a day.