Baingan Bharta Recipe – Mashed Eggplant – 30 Jun 12

Start by washing the eggplants. Unlike in other dishes you do not need to cut them now. Instead, you fire on your gas stove or make a fire over which you can cook and place the eggplants on the flames so that they get directly cooked by the fire. After a minute, when you can see that the lower side is getting done, you can turn it a bit so that the next part can get done.

Continue turning the eggplant until it is dark brown from every side. We usually get small, round eggplants here. You can of course also use the longer ones for this dish but as they also tend to be thicker, you may need to wait a bit longer for them to get cooked. Once all eggplants are dark brown all around, you take them off the fire and let them cool down.

Once they have a temperature that you can nicely hold them, start removing the dark skin of the aubergines and cut off the top of the vegetable which is not eatable. You will find the inside cooked and soft and you can just put all of it in a bowl.

In the next step you wash the tomatoes and cut them into small pieces. Please note that in this recipe I have used four small eggplants. If you use bigger ones, you will need some more tomatoes, too.

Heat up oil in a pan and add cumin, garam masala, coriander and turmeric, the fresh ginger in pieces and the curry leaves. Stir while the spices roast a bit and once they are roasted, you can add the tomatoes.

Stir the tomatoes in the spices until they are mashed and it is like puree. Once this is the case, add the pulp of the eggplant and some salt. Stir until it is all nicely mixed. Then your Bharta is ready!

Enjoy it with rice, on bread or simply pure!