 |
| Apologies for the steam- I had to take the picture quickly to get to the important business- eating! |
Tuesdays in our house are vegetarian- personally I like ease of cooking without meat (possibly due to my inherent laziness) and would eat the same dish each Tuesday if I had the choice. Unfortunately, H (the bf) doesn't share the same love for the mundane as me so each week we struggle along to find something delicious. Invariably we end up eating Indian vegetarian food- probably because there is such a wide variety and because H is an excellent cook of Indian food.
This week we went for one of Sanjeev Kapoor's recipes, Baingan Bharta. If you ever want to make some authentic Indian food, please try his website, there are sooo many recipes and they are all quite straight forward.
But back to the dish at hand! We made some (accidental) changes to the original recipe but it was extremely delicious, as you can see from the picture. Anyway, this is how we made our Sanjeev Kapoor inspired dish:
Baigan Bharta
Ingredients:
2 eggplants
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of turmeric
1 diced onion
1 inch of ginger, sliced or grated
2 cloves of garlic, sliced or grated
1 green chilli
1 teaspoon of red chilli powder
1 can of diced tomatoes
half a handful of fresh coriander
1 squeeze of lemon juice
Process:
1. Chargrill the eggplants, over and open flame is the best. You want the skin to peel off and the eggplants will shrink as they cook.
2. Let the eggplants cool, and remove the skin. Try and get it all off if you can, as burnt eggplant skin does not add to the flavour of the dish!
3. Mash the eggplants. You can do this with a fork as they will be quite soft by this point.
4. Heat about 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a pan (The proper pan is the Indian kadai, essentially a shallow wok with a more flat base. If you don't have one a reasonably deep frying pan should do). Add the cumin seeds and cook until you can smell them, it should only take about 20 seconds.
5. Add the onion and let it cook until the onion is see through.
6. Add the ginger, garlic, green chilli and turmeric and cook for a minute or so.
7. Add the red chilli and the mashed eggplants. If you need to add salt, add it now. Cover the pan and turn it to medium heat, you now need to let it cook for about 4-5 minutes depending on your pan.
8. Add the canned tomatoes, stir through nicely. Again, let it cook for about 5-8 minutes, then add the chopped coriander.
9. Once its cooked, add a squeeze of lemon juice and serve.
I am told the dish is meant to be served with fresh chapatis. Unfortunately we didn't have time to make those as well so ate the dish with wholemeal toast. But it was still delicious and between two of us finished off a meal that really should have fed three!
