Cherga

I was recently looking at the cherga rugs my grandmother made many years ago. Cherga is a traditional Bulgarian word for hand-made woolen textile made of colored yarn. The green, red, yellow and black strips weave and form strong and vivid cloth - it is beautiful. Today, as I was cleaning the vegetables, I decided to "weave" a vegetable cherga. Here it is...

Slice the eggplants, zucchini and tomatoes into equally thick rounds. Finely chop garlic and basilico, and mix in with olive oil to make a dressing. You can also use a spoonful of pesto Genovese. Apply dressing on each vegetable slice, season with salt and black pepper and arrange the slices one on top of the other, according to size. Top each pile with the stem. This is purely decorative and entirely optional. Arrange the veggie piles into a glass baking dish, pour 1/2 glass of water, cover the dish and cook slowly (about 1 1/2 hour) until the veggies are done.

Serve hot or cold with plenty of fresh parsley and basilico.