Baingan Bharta In Mustard Oil

          My family loves eggplant, especially when I prepare a dish after roasting it on stove top, they like the smoky flavor. I have a thogayal/chutney, masial and another bharta recipe on the blog, but recently this has become the most favorite eggplant dish at home. The dish is very simple, once the eggplant is roasted, peeled and mashed, the remaining can be done in just minutes. I have already mentioned that my daughter and I like dishes cooked in mustard oil, but since the husband doesn't like it if I use just mustard oil in a dish, I use a half and half mix of regular oil and mustard oil, and that way, he also likes the dish very much. This dish gets its flavor from the mustard oil and panch phoron used for seasoning and the bharta goes well with plain phulkas/rotis or even plain akki rotis ( without any added veggies, will post that recipe soon), do try this simple dish, the next time you cook eggplants..

Eggplant Roast, Brinjal Roast

          After making some Kerala and Karnataka dishes, I realized I haven't tried the Andhra cuisine that much, of course I have made a few dishes like the Pesarattu and Stuffed Eggplants but none from their day to day cooking. Today's dish is a simple Eggplant/Brinjal Roast and when I say simple, it's really that, just a handful of ingredients and no special masalas or anything. I found this recipe in the cookbook, 'Cooking with Pedatha', and in fact even while cooking I had doubts about how it would taste with such few ingredients. But then, it turned out really good, spicy and tasty and went very well with rice and dal..

Badanekai Yennegai, Karnataka Style Stuffed Eggplant Curry

          Jowar Roti With Badanekai Yennegai ( Stuffed Eggplant Curry ), ever since I came to know about this combination, I was waiting to make it. Why waiting, when I could have made it the very next day, well, I wanted to taste the combo at a restaurant serving traditional Kannadiga food, and then try it at home. But that didn't work out, so finally, I gave in and made it at home. With so many wonderful blogs out there, featuring Kannadiga dishes. actually that was not difficult. The curry turned out absolutely delicious and it tasted awesome with the Jowar rotis. I already have two versions of Stuffed Eggplant Curry in my blog, version 1 and version 2, and now this one is yet another and each one is tasty in its own way. Coming back to today's post, if you have not yet tried this combo, do try it and I am sure you'll love it, but if you can't make jowar rotis, then you can still have it with some plain rice and it's equally delicious..

Stuffed Eggplants

          Eggplants or brinjals or aubergines (some of the names that I know), there are so many varieties of them, the huge ones, the chinese eggplants, the Italian eggplants, the small, smaller and smallest brinjals, and also of different colors, white, purple and green. For today's stuffed eggplants we use the small purple brinjals, not too puny, but smaller ones, we have to slit and stuff the brinjals. And again, there are so many stuffings, each one tastes equally good, today's is adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's book. It calls for sesame seeds and coconut along with other spices to stuff the brinjals, the dish goes very well both with rice and rotis..

Baingan Bharta (Mashed Eggplant)

           When I get these big eggplants or brinjals, I mostly do this or a raitha with it. The dish gets its flavor from roasting the eggplant directly on stove top or by grilling it. I made it a little more nutritious by adding some green chana (chickpeas) to it and also a little richer by adding some cashew paste. Once you are done with roasting the eggplant and removing the charred skin, the next steps are very pretty simple, it tastes great with that smoked flavor..

Brinjal (Eggplant) Rice

          My memories of this rice goes back to my school days, a friend of mine used to bring this for lunch, it was in those eat and forget days ( but I didn't forget, I guess). This dish is very popular in the state of Karnataka and Maharashtra, but at home, we had brinjals only in sambars, curries or as the very popular stuffed eggplants. I had this again, only after marriage and after coming out of India, at a friend's place, she makes a slightly different version but nevertheless a very tasty one, will post that recipe later. Well, everybody has their own version of this rice, a small difference in the masala added, this is my version, I added some mustard seeds and black peppercorns to the masala which gave a slightly different flavor to the rice..

Brinjal Garlic Thokku

          Long time back,I had tasted homemade brinjal pickle at a friend's place, until then I didn't know that brinjals can be used for making pickles, it was very good, would try to get the recipe from her someday. Today, when I was wondering what to make with brinjal and garlic, for sending it to the Dish it Out-Brinjal n Garlic event hosted by Sangee, this thokku idea popped out. This is a very simple thokku, made with very few ingredients and the process is easy too..

Brinjal And Mochai Curry

          Brinjal or eggplant is one versatile vegetable, which can take many avatars and enact each one of them very gracefully. You can see it in almost all of the world cuisines, and in our own Indian kitchen, either in the simple sambar, poriyals, or in the more exotic baingan barthas and gutti vankayas. Fresh mochai or field beans is available in India during the Pongal season, and here in the US, throughout the year, one can find them in the frozen section of the Indian stores. Brinjal and mochai get along very well in any dish, a  marriage made in heaven..