I’ve gotten into the habit of roasting or even boiling (in a rush) eggplant and then seasoning it with a blend of “hot”, “salty”, and “sweet” (ex: cayenne + soy sauce + oyster sauce; chili paste + fish sauce + hoisin; red pepper flakes + miso + mirin, or some combination of these which become mostly Chinese, Vietnamese or Japanese dishes), but sometimes a recipe comes from a reputable source and I just have to try it (this is officially an Indian or Bangladeshi dish, similar to bhartha, but with much more nut flavour and, despite the huge quantity, less oil than you’ll find in restaurants). There’s no added sweetener but the eggplants should be sweet enough on their own, even without taking out their seeds or leeching out their liquid with salt first (eggplant cubes in a colander for 30 minutes is standard, but the extra salt plus the wait time is annoying, says the girl who just spent 5 days making ginger confit…).
This was the best eggplant dish I’ve ever made, and I’ve made a lot of eggplant. It’s no good the second or third day. It has to be fresh because the sesame flavour dies and then whole thing is kaput. But do it perfectly, and life is beautiful…
Ingredients
4 medium Asian eggplants (1 1/2 pounds – the long, thinner, lighter purple ones)
1/4 cup
1 large onion
1 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cumin seeds, crushed or coarsely ground (I toasted them first. The recipe doesn’t say to do that, but it’s standard. It actually made me doubt the recipe that this wasn’t required, but no, it was trustworthy. If a person had told me this recipe instead of seeing it printed, though, I would have worn a very quizzical, doubtful face)
2 tsp minced green cayenne chilies, optional
2 tsp shallots, minced, definitely not optional
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
Preheat the oven to 450 Fahrenheit. It’s better to char the eggplant over a grill for a smoky flavour, but the sesame oil does a pretty good job adding savouriness on its own, so roasting is fine. If you have a grill in which you can put wood chips to give food a smoky flavour, please invite me over and I will make this recipe for you. We should be friends. I also feel that if you’re reading this and we’re not already friends we should be friends, with or without eggplant.
Rub the eggplants with a little of the oil and prick them all over with a fork. Roast them in the preheated oven on a baking sheet for 45 minutes. Really you don’t even need the baking sheet, you can just put them straight on the bars, but my oven bars don’t get cleaned that often and I roast a lot of things that set off the fire alarm and leave some char in my oven, so I went with the baking sheet. Know thyself…
Let the eggplants cool (turn off oven).
Heat the rest of the sesame oil over medium-high heat in a skillet. When hot, add the onion, garlic, cayenne, turmeric and cumin. This is the giveaway on how this is not an authentic Indian recipe. In a real Indian recipe you would probably never add all these things at once. The ground spices especially would probably go in after the onion and garlic had browned, but it worked fine, and there’s enough oil to make sure nothing burns, so really it’s fine…
Lower the heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes. Do not have a seat and/or a smoke, walk the dog, start a book, etc in this cooking period. Sure, there’s lots of oil to make sure the onions don’t burn but you have 10 minutes to cut the eggplant in half, scoop out the flesh, and mash it in a bowl with a fork before the dish is ruined. Starting…now!
After the 10 minutes (set the timer, please) add the fresh cayenne chilies to the onion mixture and stir-fry 1 minute. I think I either used red cayennes or none at all. I certainly didn’t use greens. You can also skip this if your tongue doesn’t like fire. Mine does. There’s a reason there are 4 sets of spicy things in my fridge right now: a jar of Sichuan peppercorn pickled chilies, one fermented Sriracha chili paste, one un-fermented chili sauce, and 4 jars of Indian pickled jalapenos. I maybe don’t have a great reason for this, but addictions must be fed, and really, in the grand scheme of addictions I figure I’m not doing so badly. I could be my brother…(I really don’t think he reads this. Too busy being a successful addict. If he does read this, we’ll talk about it when you come visit me. Bring a grill, some wood chips, and some eggplants and we’ll make a time of it. What you don’t know, other readers, is my brother visits me once every never, so I have nothing to worry about).
We were cooking, weren’t we?
Add the eggplant and salt and cook 2-3 more minutes.
When you’re ready to serve (ideally right after the 2-3 minutes is up since the dish isn’t getting any more delicious by making it wait) add the minced shallots and stir-fry for 1 more minute. The quick fry keeps you from having raw onion breath for the rest of the night, but also keeps them crisp enough that it really is a garnish. Then garnish each serving individually with coriander (roll it up into a tight cigar and slice at 1/2 cm intervals, approximately). You can garnish the whole skillet with the cilantro but then the plate presentation isn’t as beautiful. Normally I would say garnish the skillet and eat from the skillet because it’s eggplant, but that’s a whole lot of sesame oil and I will have no part in encouraging you to over-indulge in something like 36 grams of fat. It’s meant to be one dish in a meal of many dishes. Go find yourself some naan or roti…or puri…mmm… (or other bread) and some protein, and some friends to share it with (only because the dish doesn’t keep well. Friends are returnable). Oh, and thick yogurt to cool your burning mouth. You don’t want it so hot in there that you can’t taste the sweetness and nutty sesame flavour, so periodically dousing the flames in your mouth with cooling tangy yogurt is key. I dare you to tell me this is not an amazing dish.
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