Recipe for Healthy Eggplant curry / Brinjal Curry / Dry Brinjal curry

Eggplant is one vegetable that you can either hate or love but never ignore. For all my childhood, I was an eggplant hater, may be even allergic to some varieties. Nothing life threatening, just this crazy itching in my mouth when I ate some types of eggplant.

Then for years I was a fence sitter. Okay, “this is made for lunch so I will eat the tiniest bit, just to keep you happy” kinda fence sitter. And then I discovered cooking this versatile vegetable and while I wont call myself an eggplant lover, I am now a fan.

Baingan Bharta, Vangi baath, Baba Gannoush, stuffed eggplant, gosh I have quite a list of favourite recipes with this vegetable. This recipe is an easier variation of the stuffed eggplant. You still have to roast the spices and grind them, but no painstaking stuffing involved.

This is the smarter way to enjoy the tastes of a stuffed eggplant. This dry curry goes well with rotis and great with rice and sambar. I have used the large round eggplant for this recipe, which is the kind I prefer because it has fewer seeds and cooks faster. But it should work well with any kind of eggplant.

Make sure the pieces are uniformly chopped so they cook evenly. This coarsely ground spice powder is the secret to glamming up any boring vegetable or any vegetable you don’t know what to do with

Recipe for Spicy Eggplant Curry

Serves 4

Eggplant Curry

A delicious healthy curry prepared with eggplants that can be served with any Indian bread. The freshly ground spices makes this curry irresistible!

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Prep Time 10

Cook Time 20

Total Time 30

Servings: 3 people

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Indian

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

pinch asafoetida
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1 eggplant large globe (cut into wedges or thick batons, soaked in water)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp amchoor OR powder
1 tsp tamarind paste

To grind for the spice mix

3 chillies large dried red
2 tbsps chana dal
2 tbsps coriander seeds
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 dal udad tsbp
1 sprig curry leaves
1 bay leaf

Method

In a large wok / kadai, dry roast all the spices together, until the chana dal and udad dal turn golden brown. Remove, cool and grind to a coarse powder.
In the same wok, heat 2 tbsp oil. Add the asafoetida and then drain and squeeze out all the water from the eggplant pieces and add them to the oil.
Add salt and turmeric and stir the eggplant till well coated. Lower the flame, add a little water at a time, around 1/4th cup, cover and cook the eggplant till nearly done. Don't cook to a mush.
Add the coarse spice powder, amchoor and coat the nearly cooked eggplant with the spices by stirring well. Cover for another 5 minutes with a sprinkle of water if required and let the eggplants cook completely while soaking up the flavours of the spices.
The coarsely powdered dals give the vegetable a nice crunchy texture.
Serve hot with rotis or with dal rice.

Notes

If you don't find a big eggplant, use 8-12 smaller sized eggplants for this, cutting each into wedges. This spice mix works for other vegetables like bottle gourd, snake gourd, capsicum, potato, sweet potato etc.

Follow the same method of sauteeing the vegetable until nearly done, adding the spice mix, stirring to coat well and then cover and cook for 5 mins till vegetable is fully cooked and infused with spice flavours.

Other favourite eggplant recipes:

Comments

Anonymous says: October 26, 2013 at 2:27 pm

I had never heard of eggplant…but sounds good. I will share this recipe with my mom. 🙂

Anonymous says: October 29, 2013 at 12:50 am

I never like eggplant… but after seeing this pic n reading a recipe, I’m sure to try it out 🙂 Happy to connect… Recent post: http://cookingwithsj.com/2013/10/28/butter-chakri

Anonymous says: October 30, 2013 at 6:24 am

Eggplant is brinjal in common english and baingan in Hindi. The recipe seems to be quite easy to make and worth trying.PeonyChocolate making classes in Mumbai

Anonymous says: November 1, 2013 at 8:10 am

Ohhow I Love food of Amritsar, especially that Lassi Glass! Thick glass of milkwith a huge dollop of cream aaww! Served in a good way. So when that awesome glass of Lassi comes fromthe Gian ChandLassi wale o/p Regent Cinema, Katra Sher Singh, Amritsar, Iwas dying to see how that taste was replicated in the class of Claridges. How authentic would a 5-star experience measureup to a very human-centric approach at dhabas across North India?As it turns out, it scores pretty well on some counts!

Anonymous says: November 12, 2013 at 8:54 am

Thanks! I’ll be adding this to my list.Spinal Stenosis Symptoms – http://promedspine.com/spinal-stenosis

Eggplant curry