Grilled eggplants with onion and cranberry relish

In the beginning I'd like to say that I'm very thankful to people who read my blog and, especially, those who give me their feedback. Thank you!
One of my friends asked me about some recipes and today I'm going to share with you my lunch and say couple words about a beautiful vegetable which I cooked. It is an eggplant which is botanically not a vegetable but a fruit,actually, and India is proud to be the homeland for it. America can thank Thomas Jefferson for the introduction to eggplant in 18th century. Eggplant comes from the same nightshade family of plants with potato, tomato and pepper even though all of the members of this family have such different characteristics of appearance, taste, and cooking methods. By the way, even eggplant by itself has more than 700 varieties around the world which can be slightly different in taste and cooking method used.

 I like eggplants for this huge variety of cooking methods you can use to prepare them and different tastes you can create.  Today I played with the original recipe of Baked Eggplants with Pomegranate and Mint from Julia Visotskaya, and had fun cooking Warm Salad from Eggplants with Onion and Cranberry Relish.

For the beginning I had eggplants and no idea what to cook with them. A long time ago I cooked Julia Visotskaya's dish, but I haven't saved the recipe nor had pomegranate in my house. For a good start I opened my refrigerator and pantry room and took from them anything which, in my opinion, I could mix. 

To make relish I poured 1/3 of  Modera in the saute pan and reduced it on a medium heat about half; then I added 1 tbs of honey to the reduced wine and warmed it enough to melt completely, about 1-2 minutes. 

This liquid I added to 2 oz of the chopped onion with 2 oz of mashed cranberry, juice of half of the lemon, 1/2 tsp of balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp of the worcestershire sauce, and 2 tbsp of virgin olive oil. 

Next, I sliced my eggplants in thin slices

and seasoned them with salt, black pepper, coriander, and thyme. After mixing eggplants well to spread seasonings evenly, I brushed them with a little amount of olive oil and started to fry them on the grill pan

Meanwhile, I tried my relish and found that I would like to chop it more nicely, so I used my chopper 

and adjusted taste by adding a little bit more honey and cranberry. When eggplants were done, I layered  them and brushed each with relish

Mint chiffonade on the top of this salad is the perfect garnishing. Meaty resilient eggplants with sour crunchy relish and mint aroma made me enjoy their taste so much that I forgot about my main dish.

This salad would be a great appetizer for the family supper, but for feeding guests you can make nice bites.