Khatte Baingan/ Sour Eggplant Curry

Hi.

Firstly let me please apologize again to all my friends as I am not regular in visiting you. Life has become kind of busy these days, my kid started school and the new concept of CCE is killing us. Conceptually the CCE (continuous comprehensive evaluation) has been started to unburden the child but has been misinterpreted and used inappropriately by the schools and is more burdening now. We face at least one test everyday and loads of home work. On top of it the heat is killing us, with the temp hitting 44C  there’s no relief and the government here is still not taking any measures to advance the holidays which has happened in a few states. My son sits on the top floor of the school and faces load shedding for 2-3 hours daily. By the time he is back, is completely exhausted, fresh lime sharbat, panha and glucon-D are our saviors.

One of these days to beat this heat and the irritation inside me against this CCE thing, I concocted this curry, which gladly turned out very tasty. I realise all my frustrations vanish when I cook something new and as S says, I cook best when I am agitated or angry!!! LOL. This curry is tangy and spicy. As the name suggests, sour is a more dominant flavour here for which I have used a good quantity of curds. Curds as we all know is extremely healthy especially for heat, so it serves a dual purpose here…curbs heat and provides sourness.

Brinjal or the eggplant is liked and disliked by many. Gladly in my family every one likes it, thus providing me a platform to experiment more with this vegetable. Amongst all the curries that I make with it, stuffed version is always demanded the most. So here’s an unusual way of stuffing the eggplants in less time.

Ingredients
about 12-15 baby eggplant
3 onions roughly chopped
5-6 garlic pods
an inch of ginger
1 tsp fennel seeds
3 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp sugar
To Combine together
a cup of yogurt
a tsp of rock salt
3 tsp Degi Mirch
a pinch of turmeric
2-1/2 tsp cumin pwd
3 tbsp coriander pwd
1 tsp amchoor pwd
3/4 tsp garam masala
salt to taste
Method

Wash the brinjals and make a + cut on it’s head keeping the end  and tail intact. Soak them in salted water till used.

Grind together Onion, ginger, garlic and fennel coarsely. Heat oil and put half teaspoon sugar followed by the ground paste. Saute on low flame till oil separates. Adding sugar at this stage gives a nice ‘tavang’ to the curry. Tavang is basically the oil with the red colour rising above in the curry.

In a bowl mix all the ingredients under TO COMBINE. Switch off the flame and put this mix and keep stirring, this prevents the curd to curdle. Switch on the flame again and let the gravy cook on low flame.

Once you see the oil separating on edges, tip in the eggplants one by one and coat them thoroughly with the gravy, yes, need not wait to actually stuff.

Gradually add a cup of water and give the curry a gentle stir, bring it to a boil, cover and cook on low flame till done.

This curry is tangy and extremely flavourful. Perfect to go with paratha or rice. Tastes best after 5-6 hrs of cooking. So in case you are expecting guests, I will suggest you to cook this a day in advance.

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