Bagaare Baingan - Eggplant in a peanut / coconut / sesame gravy

 This dish is for all eggplant lovers - a versatile, not so spicy dish full of the flavours of beautiful eggplant in a rich peanut / coconut / sesame seed sauce.  Traditionally served with the famous Hyderabadi Biriyani, this dish goes just as well with any Indian flat bread or rice. 

I had this recipe for ages - torn from an old "Femina" magazine of my mother's. Amma used to keep a scrap book with tried and tested recipes pasted in the scrap book with notes next to it.  I think this was meant to go in the book, but found its way to me instead.

I think of the days when my mother used to collect recipes - there was no google - and all recipes were painstakingly written down in little notebooks. The notebooks were 176 pages and hard cover - the kind we used for school in those days.  These days everything is available at your fingertips and nobody cares much for the hand written recipe books.  I treasure mine, though.  The few recipes that I have written in old "Airmail" letters and postcards - I still have them; treasured memories of a golden time that will never come back.

Sorry I do not have step by step pictures, I have had no time to cook during the day time - and so most of the cooking is done at night these days and this picture was taken the next day.

Ingredients:

6 - 8 baby egg plants, choose similar sizes, wash and pat dry.

3-4 tablespoons of oil

For dry roasting:

2 tablespoons shredded coconut

2 tablespoons peanuts

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

1/4 teaspoon nigella seeds

Other ingredients:

1 big red onion, diced

2 green chillies

2 teaspoons coriander powder

2 teaspoons Kashmiri chilli powder

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste

1/4 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 small piece of tamarind soaked in water and juice extracted (see note below)

( Update: you can use 2 teaspoons of tamarind paste if you do not have dried tamarind)

1 tablespoon jaggery powder ( brown sugar is a good substitute if you do not have jaggery)

2 cups water 

salt to taste

Method:

Take the egg plants and slit them lengthwise about 3/4 of the way to the top leaving the stem and calyx intact.

In a large (wide mouthed) sauce pan, heat 3-4 tablespoons of oil. 

Roast the eggplants gently till they become cooked about 3/4 of the way and don't start losing their shape.

While the eggplants are roasting, in a separate pan, toast the coconut and when it turns light brown, add the sesame seeds, peanuts, fennel seeds and nigella seeds.  Toast till the ingredients turn fragrant and then blend it in a grinder to a fine paste with a couple of tablespoons of water.  Set aside.

The eggplants should have finished roasting by now,  Take them out carefully and set them aside on a platter.  In the same wide mouthed saucepan, using the left over oil from the eggplant, add the 1/4 teaspoon nigella seeds. When it sizzles, add the onions and cook it it turns brown. Next add the green chillies and ginger garlic paste till the raw smell of the ginger garlic is no longer there.

Next add the chilli powder, turmeric powder and coriander powders.  Cook till the oil turns red and fragrant with the spices. Now add the ground up paste and cook till the mixture becomes homogenous.  Add two cups of water, the tamarind extract and jaggery.  Let the mixture boil.  

Immerse the roasted eggplants gently into the mixture and make sure all the egg plants are well covered with the mixture.  Cover the lid and simmer for about 6 to 8 minutes.

Serve hot with pulao rice, chappaties or parotta.

Note:

You can buy dry tamarind fruit from most Indian shops in Melbourne.  Tamarind is a souring agent and you use it by taste - the more you use, the tangier the dish will be.  To use the dry tamarind, pick off a small piece - about a tablespoon, pour boiling water over it, just enough to cover it and let it rest for about 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, use your hands to squeeze the pulp out of the fruit.  When you have squeezed out as much as you can, sieve it and get the fibrous parts of the fruit out and discard. Use the thick viscous liquid left behind to flavour your sauce.

There is no hard and fast rule as to the amount of tamarind you use.  I like some curries tangier and I will add more tamarind to it. This eggplant dish is mildly tangy - and needs only about a tablespoon of fruit to be squeezed into pulp.

You can leave the tamarind in your pantry for over a year - since it is dried and salted it will not go off.

Try tasting a little bit of the dry fruit to get used to the tanginess and get a feel for how much to use in your dish.  A lot of South East Asian countries use tamarind as a souring agent in their dishes.