Minty Stuffed Eggplant Curry, Version III

Hi!

I’m running out of time these days and there’s so much to finish before I start working. I plan and plan to finish maximum every day and still reach no where close to completion.  I have two event round ups to complete before my MIL  joins us for a long stay and I must tell you she is a sweet heart, always ready to help me in every possible way. Along with her I’m also going to welcome my cousin FIL and MIL and S’s aunt. Amongst all this my parents are visiting us for medical reasons. My Mom has to undergo a major neuro-surgery, so you can see I have extremely tight days coming up and of which I am only worried about my Mom’s surgery, I just hope that goes well. So please bear with me, as much as I want to visit your space I am not able to do so. Things do not end here, immediately after I join work, I have to face a major interview so have to study a lot before that and God only knows when I will be able to do that….

Amongst all this chaos my family is still  a foodie family and wants variation in food, they completely believe in ‘variety is the spice of life’ and I surely keep trying to innovate regularly for them and the challenging task always is to make the day to day regular food interesting, of which curry is the most challenging one, yes, mine is surely a curried family, LOL.

Stuffed eggplant is such  a versatile preparation that it’s always fun to try a one. I had never added mint flavour to this vegetable so thought of experimenting this time or one can say the urgent urge to finish off the mint before it gets spoilt made me experiment.. and I’m so glad I did, as the curry turned out to be extremely flavourful and when served with rice or paratha made an excellent combination. The mint blends well with eggplant.

If you are in love with eggplants and love the stuffed ones, I have posted a few versions of it that one can check here, here and here.

Ingredients

3 onions

4-5 garlic pods

a piece of ginger

3-4 green chillies

1/4 cup mint + 1 cup mint leaves

a small sprig coriander

2 large tomatoes

Oil for cooking

1/4 tsp. fenugreek seeds

1/2 tsp. mustard seeds

a pinch of turmeric

1 tsp. red chilli pwd.

2 tbsp. coriander pwd.

a large pinch of garam masala

10-12 baby eggplants

1 potato cut into fingers

Method

Grind together onion, ginger, garlic, coriander and 1/4 cup mint. Heat oil and add mustard seeds followed by fenugreek seeds. Once the fenugreek seeds are lightly brown in colour add the onion-mint paste and saute till the raw smell disappears.

Add the coriander pwd, turmeric and chilli pwd and sauté again. Puree the tomatoes, mix in and add salt. Cook till the oil separates. Add the cup of mint and mix well.

Now add the eggplants which has been given ‘X’ slits and the potatoes into the spice mix and mix well. Add about a cup of water and bring the curry to a boil, cover and cook on low flame till done.

Sprinkle the garam masala and mix again. All the time one has to ensure that the spices do not overpower the mint flavour.

Serve with rice or paratha.

Sending this to my event ‘Only’ Original Recipes guest hosted by Nivedita.