Baingan Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

Nom Nom Nom!! My husband chowed this dish down which was surprising because he's a wicked carnivore and this was a meatless dish!  I was ready to have a jamaican beef patty on standby in case this was an epic fail...But no patty was needed. Success.  I knew he would try it and he does like curry but he's SO anti veggies as a lot of you know.  But man oh man, the dishes I have been finding that mask veggies so well is fantabulous!!   I have been wanting to use up my eggplant from the farmers market so I hunted down an indian dish called Baingan Bharta on allrecipes.com   I found a bunch of other curry recipes online but I had majority of the ingredients on hand for this recipe.  When Mike went on deployment years ago he brought home spices from india.  I was so excited to use them and I go through and not ONE of them is what I need. lol. Go figure!

 You'd think out of all the spices he brought home, one would surely make curry... nope. maybe another time...It will probably be another 4 years before I reach for those spices again.  This dish is very low calorie.  Of course I added a few potatoes and we ate it with rice but still healthy none the less. Probably less then 400 cals. Hope you like it too.

 Ingredients

• 1 large eggplant
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil ( I also used 1/2 cup chicken stock)
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds (used cumin powder)
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste (used 1 tsp minced garlic, 1 tsp ginger)
• 1 tablespoon curry powder (used a little more for my tasting)
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 fresh jalapeno chile pepper, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• pepper to taste
• 1/4 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
• I added 3 diced potatoes

 Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
Rub eggplant with a little oil and score each side with an "X" shape.  Place eggplant on a medium baking sheet. Bake 20 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until tender. Remove from heat, cool, peel, and chop. 

 All baked

Peel when cool then chop.

Now I don't know what the official way is to cut an eggplant but

I'm going to show you how I did it because it works for me. ;)

Cut the eggplant in slices but making sure not to COMPLETELY cut the other end

Turn it on the opposite side and do the same thing, don't cut to the very end.

hold with one hand and chop with the other...obviously I had to take the photo. 

TA DA!!!! 

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Mix in cumin powder and onion. Cook and stir until onion is tender. 

Mix ginger, garlic, curry powder, and tomato into the saucepan, and cook about 1 minute. ( I put my jalapenos and cilantro in during this step too.  The cilantro is meant for a garnish but I like cilantro..so we'll just throw it in. )  Season with salt and pepper to your taste.

This is where I added the chicken stock, my pan was drying out.

Mix in eggplant and potatoes. Cover, and cook 10 minutes over high heat. 

Remove cover, add yogurt (which I completely forgot to picture.  My friend blogged about chobani yogurt and it is quite tasty so I used it in this dish.)  stir, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking about 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro to serve.