Pisto

Ahh, pisto. That classic Spanish summer time dish. Almost everywhere in the Mediterranean, you find some version of a stew made from onion, eggplant, zucchini, and tomato. Some places add more ingredients. Some omit one or the other. The variations across the Mediterranean are endless. From ratatouille to matbukha, menemen to shakshouka, galayet to piperade, almost everywhere has some version of this dish.

And while Spain is not truly a Mediterranean country in the culinary sense, it does share a number of dishes with the wider Mediterranean. Those are primarily dishes originally from the Caliphate of Córdoba and the Emirate of Granada. Pisto is one of those dishes, and is so simple and obvious a use of summer vegetable glut, that I would be more surprised if there wasn’t a version of it in Spain.

This is my favorite version. Closer to the older Moorish recipe, and cooked in individual steps instead of simply dumped in the pot and stewed into submission. Give it a try, and I guarantee you will have a new favorite way to use up your glut of late summer vegetables.

History of Pisto

Pisto, in all it’s regional varieties, has a singular antecedent – a Moorish recipe called Alboronía. The Castilian conquerors adopted it as their own after the fall of Toledo. It has been immensely popular in Spain ever since.

There is a legend that Alboronía is a calque of the Arabic word ‘al-baraniyya’. Unfortuinately there is no proof of this at all. The ‘etymology’ usually relies on quoting the Diccionario de Autoridades. This is fine as far as it goes, but the Diccionario makes no mention of an Arabic root. Instead, the writer jumps then to a made up Hindi word as a supposed Arabic word for guiso or stew. The problem with this is, as usual, no supporting documents cited. It is also a long way from the actual word for stew يَخْني (yakhny) to “baraniyya”.

مطبوخة‎ (maṭbūkhah) on the other hand is part of the definition of stew in arabic خُضار مَطْبوخ مَع الَّلحْم (khudar matbwkh mae allalhm – vegetables cooked with meat). Additionally it is the name of the current Maghrebi dish that originated from the Sephardim after their expulsion from Spain – Matbukha. Whether that makes modern Matbukha and Pisto cousins, or one the uncle of the other, I have no way of knowing. However, it seems rather obvious that neither is descended from a dish named al-baraniyya.

Ingredients

• 1 large white onion.
• 3 garlic cloves.
• 2 bell peppers. One red, One Green, or any two other peppers you have. Italian peppers are very popular.
• 2 globe eggplant. Glossy, deeply colored black, firm to the touch.
• 1 zucchini. This is the perfect use for that overly large one you left in the garden too long.
• 800 g peeled tomatoes. Fresh, home canned, commercial whole canned tomatoes, they all work

Instructions

For The Eggplant

1. Peeling: If your eggplants are small and young, the skin will be tender and delicious. If they are older or larger, the skin will be disagreeably tough, and they should be peeled before cooking.
2. Then, slice your eggplant along the narrow axis. Look at the flesh. It should be pale and creamy. Cut off and discard any dark, bruised portions, or any seeds that are turning brown. The taste of the seeds will be bitter, and the texture of bruised eggplant is slimy and disagreeable.
3. Purge the eggplants if necessary. This is done by salting them and allowing the salt to draw out moisture from the flesh. The reason for this is two-fold. One, in older eggplants (any that you have peeled), the liquid in the flesh will be bitter, and will taint any dish you cook them in. Two, it helps to firm up the flesh of the eggplant and help them to not absorb so much oil in the cooking process. This is a critical step in making pisto, so as not to have made an olive oil soup.
4. To purge the eggplant, salt the slices liberally and allow them to sit in a colander for at least an hour, then rinse to remove the salt. I like to chuck them in a colander, put the colander in a mixing bowl, and leave the whole thing in the fridge overnight. Once rinsed, gently press the slices between towels to remove any remaining juices and firm up the flesh.

For the Other Vegetables

1. Bell peppers have an enormously thick skin, and chopped up into the right size pieces for something like pisto, these little flags of pepper skin become enormously noticeable, and a sure thing for getting stuck between your teeth. So peel them. With a regular vegetable peeler, or with a kitchen torch, whichever way you prefer. Personally, I always use a torch. If you are using other peppers, they may have thinner skins and not need to be peeled. I never peel Italian long peppers for instance.
2. Add a little oil to the pan and saute the diced onion over medium low heat until caramelized. Remove and reserve.
3. Turn the heat up to medium and saute your peppers. You want them to brown a bit without getting too very soft. Remove and reserve.
4. Repeat with the zucchini, getting a nice browning on all of it.
5. Dice your eggplant and with a bit more oil in the pan, turn the heat up to medium high and brown the diced eggplant all over.
6. In the pan, add your diced garlic, and a minute later, your tomatoes (peeled and whole).
7. Still over med-high heat, chop up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon as they cook with the garlic.
8. Reduce the heat to low or very low and add back in the onion, peppers, zucchini, and eggplant.
9. Mix well and on the lowest possible heat, leave the pan to simmer gently with the lid on for 45 Minutes