Like most Tuesday nights this year I’m joining Linda in the Tuesday night vegetarian challenge. To cook seasonal produce (preferably home-grown) to make simple vegetarian meals. Today I harvested 13 lebanese eggplants, without the foggiest idea what to do with them. I looked to Liz’s blog and found her recipe for Eggplant Masala.
I’m not going to reproduce her recipe – it’s hers – check out her blog- but I’ll describe the process.
Firstly I pricked the skin of the eggplants and roasted in the oven at 210 degrees until the skin collapsed. I think I need to cook them a bit longer, because they held together more that I was expecting later on. If you try out the recipe, perhaps give them longer than you initially think.
I then pureed onion, garlic (home-grown) and ginger in the food processor and fried them off in a pan with oil and turmeric until golden. It started more vibrant and yellow, then changed to a deeper golden colour. I recently bought a new batch of turmeric, and I’ve really noticed the improvement in pungency over the old batch.
Next I added chopped tomatoes, coriander and chilli. I used a bit less chilli and coriander than Liz specifies, because my Mother in Law was here for dinner, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like either.
Next I added the eggplant to the pan. It was then that I realised that it really wasn’t cooked enough, so I added water and increased the heat. Unfortunately this gave only limited success, and eventually I had to pluck the eggplant out of the pan and put it through the food processor before adding it back in.
After I was happy with the texture I added garam masala and lemon juice before serving.
Now I’m not going to diminish the value of the recipe by posting my picture of the finished product. You can see it on Liz’s blog, and you can probably imagine that it doesn’t photograph well in artificial light, particularly after dinner and packaged into lunch containers 🙂
Suffice to say I will make it again. The balance of flavours was really good, and despite the kids’ resistance (I made the rookie error of telling them it contained eggplant) I think they actually didn’t mind it. I made naan bread to go with it, which helped.
Head on over to Linda’s blog to see what she and others are cooking (vegetarian of course) on this Tuesday night. Looks like it was Zucchini macaroni cheese – oh how I wish I didn’t have a dairy allergy in the house!
500m2 in Sydney 