Brits call eggplant aubergine, and it’s a very healthy food, providing fiber, antioxidants, and bioflavonoids. Although we refer to it as a vegetable, when you cut into it and see the pattern of seeds, you realize it’s actually a fruit. And like many fruits, most of the nutrition comes from that purple skin.
Ingredients
- coconut oil
- 1 (1 ¼ pound) eggplant
Optional (because you have to fry these up and some people just don’t want to take the time)
- ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
- ½ teaspoon sesame seeds
- 1 Tablespoon crushed ginger
- 5 cloves garlic, chopped/minced
- 2 onions peeled with one finely chopped
- 1 green chili pepper, seeded and chopped (red pepper if you don’t have this)
- ¼ – ½ cup tomato puree
- Sprinkle of crushed dry Fenugreek Leaves
- Sprinkle of crushed dry Curry Leaves
- 1 teaspoon Asafetida (Hing)
- ½ teaspoon fenugreek powder (all my teaspoons are “rounded.”)
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 Tablespoon Celtic sea salt
- ½ cup coconut milk ( ½ water + ½ coconut milk powder)
- cayenne pepper to taste
- chopped cilantro leaves (sprinkled over finished dish)
Directions
Anyone who’s ever fried up eggplant knows how they suck up the oil and everyone has a trick to keep that to a minimum. Ours is the easiest: Slice and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet (we use coconut oil and liquid lecithin) and bake at 350 for 20 – 25 minutes. When they are cool, you can cut them up in to chunks no larger than an inch in any direction.
Because they don’t really add to the flavor, most avoid the frying of cumin and sesame seeds, but if you want: Heat the 3 tablespoons coconut oil in the same skillet over medium heat. Stir in the cumin, and sesame seeds, and cook until the cumin turns golden, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat and then follow the instructions in the next paragraph, but without adding anymore coconut oil.
On medium low, heat up 3 tablespoons of coconut oil and then stir in the ginger and garlic, and cook for a few seconds. Stir in one onion and green chili pepper (if you don’t have one, chop up a red sweet pepper, and you can add a bit more cayenne to make up for the missing green chili), and continue to cook and stir until the onion is golden, about 10 minutes.
Add the 2 tablespoons oil (coconut or olive oil at this point, though for a truly authentic sauce [that scares off most of us westerners] make it Black Seed Oil [we didn’t like this]), turn up the heat to medium-high and fry eggplant pieces for about 5 minutes.
NutriBullet Time
If you don’t have one, you can use a powerful blender. Or, you can just add these as they are and cook them in. It’s really no big deal. We’ve made this recipe 5 times, each time different, and it always turns out wonderful, except it really needs a bit more salt. And cooking in the cayenne pepper is always better than adding it afterwards.
But we’ve liked the Nutribullet Version best of all.
Into your Nutribullet (this link is to one of our affiliates and the exact version we have in our kitchen. There are other versions there, so check them out): all the spices (add a bit more cumin if you didn’t have the cumin seeds), one medium onion cut into smaller pieces, tomato puree, water and coconut milk powder and let er rip!
Pour that over the eggplant in your frying pan, stir up, cover and simmer for about five minutes.
Serve sprinkled with cilantro leaves.
See Also:
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