Baingan Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

Having church earlier now leaves me more time in the afternoon to make a Sunday dinner. A neighbor dropped off an eggplant earlier in the week so that was the inspiration for tonight's meal. I asked Lindsie what she would do with it and she sent me a link to a recipe for Baingan Bharta.

Ingredients

• 1 large eggplant
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds (could not find cumin seeds at the regular grocery store so used ground cumin instead)
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste (grated a half inch nub of peeled ginger and 2 cloves of garlic in place of the paste)
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt (used a 6 oz container)
• 1 fresh jalapeno chile pepper, finely chopped (we used serrano because we had a few left over from Lindsie's Thai curry dish)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Cut eggplant in half and place cut side down on a medium baking sheet. Bake 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until tender. Remove from heat, cool, peel, and chop.
3. If serving with rice, start the rice before you continue. Rice should be done around the same time as the curry.
4. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Mix in cumin and onion. Cook and stir until onion is tender.
5. Mix ginger garlic paste, curry powder, and tomato into the saucepan, and cook about 1 minute. Stir in yogurt.
6. Mix in eggplant and serrano pepper, and season with salt.
7. Cover and cook 10 minutes over high heat and stir periodically. Remove cover, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking about 5 minutes.
8. Garnish with cilantro to serve.

Next time I will double the recipe because this was enough to serve myself, Dean and Greg with no second servings. It was a tasty meal for cooking with eggplant for the first time. I think Dean is starting to get used to our vegetarian dishes. :-)