Eggplant Curry (August 7, 2007)

Last weekend we bought an Eggplant at the Farmer’s Market.  They were so big and looked so delicious (and they were only 1.00), so we got one…and this is what we did with it. We served it over couscous.

Baingan Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 large eggplant
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 tomato, diced (we used canned petite diced)
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 fresh jalapeno chile pepper, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Place eggplant on a medium baking sheet. Bake 20 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until tender. Remove from heat, cool, peel, and chop.
3. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Mix in cumin seeds and onion. Cook and stir until onion is tender.
4. Mix ginger garlic paste, curry powder, and tomato into the saucepan, and cook about 1 minute. Stir in yogurt. Mix in eggplant and jalapeno pepper, and season with salt. Cover, and cook 10 minutes over high heat. Remove cover, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking about 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro to serve

David: I feel like it was just the right level of spicy, which was good.  But the inherent mushiness of eggplant limited my enjoyment. B
Carla: I wanted it a bit saltier. I thought it was fine. Not excellent, but pretty good. David suggests that we add a different main ingredient (like chicken or tofu) and try again. B

Eggplant Panini (August 30, 2006)

For this week’s panini night we created one ourselves. We used eggplant (that we got from the farmer’s market) and breaded and fried it. We then put the cooked eggplant on to a panini bread topped it with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese and then cooked them. We also had spaghetti with sauce and salad. There is not a recipe for this one, per say; we breaded the eggplant with egg and seasoned bread crumbs and that was the most intensive part of the process.

David: i had high hopes for eggplant paninis, but i was brought back to earth when we tasted them. they weren’t bad, but they were certainly nothing special. i think that the bread ended up soaking in a lot of the red sauce we had put on them, and in the process, a bit of the
flavor was lost. the end result was a little bit bland. in the future, red sauce as a dipping agent might be a better idea, or perhaps more dramatically spiced eggplant, as we put very little on them. a C

Carla: I liked the idea of eggplant panini. I am picky about the meat that I eat which limits the panini ability a bit. So the idea of using an eggplant seemed really good. Unfortunately, it did not turn out as well as we had hoped. The bread seemed to soak up the spaghetti sauce a bit too much thus causing there to a be a lack of flavor. I think we should try them again some other way. C