George's Weblog

Today I wanted to have some vegatables for lunch. I had a few eggplants that needed to be used so I made this Northern Indian curry dish, Baingan Bharta.

I think some people avoid eggplant because of the texture.  This dish helps even it out because the eggplant is cooked until everything is very soft. The eggplant skin is removed so it is more uniform. The dish also contains tomatoes which are similar in texture.

The flavor of the dish is medium spicy with the familiar Indian flavors of cumin (jeera), turmeric (haldi) and coriander. There are also some chilies and red chili powder to give it some heat.

I started with this recipe from Manjula's Kitchen but then I took some exceptions. First of all, Manjula Jain avoids onion and garlic but I don't have a problem with them. I didn't put any garlic in but I did use some onion. For the recipe size as given I added one small onion, chopped. I didn't add any bell pepper, mostly because I didn't have any and my wife doesn't like peppers anyway.

The other thing I did was instead of making a puree with the tomatoes, chili and ginger I added them as-is to the pot. I like the tomatoes to be a bit chunky. So I made sure the ginger was finely chopped and added it at the same time as the tomatoes.

So here is the method I used:

Add oil to pan, heat until a cumin seed cracks when dropped in. Add cumin seeds and aesfoetida and stir for a few seconds. Add finely chopped chili and fry for few more seconds. Add onion, cook until almost transparent (about 5 or 6 minutes). Add chopped tomatoes and finely chopped ginger, coriander powder, haldi, red chili powder. Cook on medium heat until tomatoes are softened.  Add the eggplant and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and stir every few minutes until eggplant is the desired texture (well cooked and very soft). Reduce heat to minimum, sprinkle in the garam masala and salt to taste. Mix a bit more and it's ready for serving.