Issue #150: More Eggplant, This Time Indian Style
Another Way to Prepare My Favorite Vegetable
Last week I was in Stockholm to speak at the annual Big Meet food tech conference and I spent a couple of days afterward wandering around Copenhagen. It was a quick trip. As always when I visit Scandinavia, I ate extremely well and spent most of my time gawking at how beautifully designed everything is. Despite not having seen any New Nordic eggplant dishes while I was there, when I started writing this week’s newsletter on my flight home, I felt I wasn’t quite finished with the subject of my favorite vegetable.
Those of you who saw Issue #148, will recall that while sharing reminiscences and a recipe for a Sichuan preparation, I declared eggplant my favorite vegetable. As much as I love eggplant’s taste and texture, I admire its versatility. Eggplant is a member of the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes and peppers, and it plays an important role in many of the world’s great cuisines, especially around the Mediterranean, in the Middle East, and throughout Asia, where it is thought to have originated.
Before you go unsubscribe because you think this has become the Department of Eggplant newsletter, I promise this is my last eggplant recipe for a while.
This week’s eggplant recipe hails from India. It originates with Natasha Gandhi, an Indian cook and food personality I know only from Instagram. Her lushly filmed cooking videos have had me drooling ever since we were in India earlier this year and Meta’s geo-located algorithm pushed her into my feed. Something about the way her Reels are produced reminds me of early Nigella Lawson, only in this instance the sensual close-ups focus on the food, not the cook. In seductive slow-motion, Natasha massages masalas into meats, sautés mountains of diced onions and other aromatics, scatters colorful ground spices, and enriches sauces with yogurt or coconut milk. She only cooks in oversized, hand-hammered brass and copper casseroles that are themselves so rich looking and tightly shot you want to dive in.
I’ve probably saved a dozen or more of Natasha’s recipes to try one day, but so far the only one I’ve made is her Baingan Bharta, a fragrant Indian eggplant dish that has already entered my eggplant rotation.
Like many eggplant dishes, including the Sichuan Eggplant I shared a couple of weeks ago, this one requires a two-stage cooking process. First you stud the eggplants with plenty of garlic and chili and then you roast them whole over fire or in a very hot oven until the flesh is soft and the skin falls off. Then you chop the flesh, garlic, chili and all, and combine it with a fragrant, tomato base. This could be a Middle Eastern recipe—I suspect it has Persian roots—except the spicing makes it taste distinctly Southeast Asian.
Natasha recommends using mustard oil for this dish, which is a common cooking oil in India derived from mustard seeds that has a high smoke point and distinct flavor. In the U.S. mustard oil can only be sold for “external use” due to a fatty acid it contains that in early studies was thought to cause heart disease. (Rape seed oil is high in the same fatty acid.) You can read about it here on Serious Eats. I have some mustard oil in the cupboard I use only occasionally when I think a recipe will benefit from the unique flavor of the oil, often an Indian pickle. This recipe has so much else going on in it that I think you can use any oil you’ve got.
Serve the eggplant hot or room temperature, as a starter or side dish, with rice and plenty of bread to scoop it up.
RECIPE: Indian Eggplant
Makes 6 servings
2 medium, firm eggplants (1 1/2 to 2 pounds, total)
8 cloves garlic, peeled and split lengthwise in half
2 or 3 green chilis
3 tablespoons mustard oil or any vegetable oil
2 large onions, finely chopped
3 Roma tomatoes, finely chopped
1/3 cup frozen peas
1 tablespoon Kashmiri chili powder
2 tablespoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon dried fenugreek leaves
Handful chopped fresh cilantro
Preheat a barbecue, gas grill, or 450°F. oven. With a sharp paring knife, make four long slits in each eggplant and evenly distribute the split garlic cloves among them, stuffing them into the eggplants. Add a green chili or two to a slit in each of the eggplants. Brush the eggplants with about a tablespoon of oil. Place the eggplants on the grill or in the oven and roast, turning regularly, until the skin is nicely blackened and the flesh is soft. About 25 minutes. Remove from the grill to a large plate and allow them to cool until you can handle them. Peel off and remove the skin, and use a large spoon to scrape the cooked flesh of the eggplant, garlic cloves, a chilis to a cutting board. Chop it all together.
Meanwhile, in a large casserole or Dutch overn, heat the remaining oil over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onions and cook until translucent. Add the chopped tomato and peas and continue cooking until the tomatoes give off their juice. Add the chili powder, coriander, cumin, and turmeric and cook a minute or so until the spices are fragrant. Add the chopped eggplant flesh along with the dried fenugreek leaves. Cook for a few minutes for all the flavors to blend. Stir in the chopped cilantro and serve with rice and/or Indian breads.
