Indian Stuffed Eggplant

Hey there!

This Sunday I invited my grandmother to join us for dinner because I haven’t seen her in so long.

I wanted to cook something special for her, something she hadn’t ever tasted before. At first I was going for something Moroccan inspired, then however I decided to experiment with some new flavours. At first I was thinking about Italian, but thanks to one of my best friends India popped into my mind. She is actually on a trip to India and since she was texting me about the beautiful food she is being served I decided to give one of my favourite dishes an Indian twist.

I love stuffed eggplants and it is one of the go-to dishes in my household. If we ever struggle to come up with an Idea to what we are having for dinner we usually end up with stuffed eggplants. Whether the stuffing is Italian, infused with fresh oregano and basil or Moroccan, where I like to add a lot of cumin, the stuffed eggplants always turn out to be a crowd pleaser. I have never actually made an Indian version of them but I was pretty confident about a delicious outcome of my new creation.

Since I had just been on my legume shopping spree I actually had some mung beans in my pantry therefore I wanted to include this new addition in my dinner creation.

I wasn’t quite sure about which flavours would go with those beans but after doing some research on the internet I found a few Dahl recipes with mung beans and I created my filling inspired by a few of those recipes. I ended up using a lot of spices; nevertheless the other ingredients are rather basic. Eggplants, tomatoes, an onion and some garlic, that was all I used besides the spices and the mung beans.

I actually found these cute little round eggplants in my supermarket and I thought they were perfect for my dish, nonetheless you could also use normal ones and it would turn out the same, at least taste-wise. As far as spices go I decided to include fresh ginger, cumin seeds, ground coriander and turmeric as well as some of my favourite curry powder. I bought my favourite curry powder in the food department of one of the luxury department stores in Switzerland, so it is rather high quality. But honestly just use whatever you have on hand.

Even though the preparation isn’t very time consuming the cooking takes quite a long time but since you don’t have to watch the beans cooking this didn’t really worry me.

I loved the end result I received, the stuffed eggplant were extremely delicious, even my grandmother who is used to eating local Swiss cuisine was very fond of my creation, she was definitely enjoying to eat something different once in a while, since she usually gets her food delivered from an elder care organisation.

Well now you probably read enough about my new creation and how I came up with it so you might want to know the recipe to this divine deliciousness.

 

So let’s jump in to it, there you have it, the recipe.

Ingredients:

 

• 200g mung beans
• 5 round eggplants (or three normal ones)
• 1tsp olive oil
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1tsp cumin seeds
• 1tsp ground coriander
• 1tsp turmeric
• 1tsp cayenne pepper
• 1tsp of fresh ginger
• 1tbs tomato paste
• 2tbs curry powder ( I used my favourite from Globus delicatessa)
• 50ml water
• salt

1. Soak the mung beans according to packaging directions

2. Preheat your oven to 180°C, cut up the top of your eggplant and scoop out the inside with a melon baller the edge should be around 1cm wide, chop up coarsely the scooped out bits of the eggplant and put it aside for later

 

3. Sprinkle the eggplant generously with salt and if you like some cayenne pepper and then bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until they have softened

 

 

4.Meanwhile finely dice your onion, garlic as well as the ginger, preheat your olive oil in a saucepan

5.Add the onion, garlic and ginger to the saucepan and fry over medium heat until they have softened and developed some colour, then add the chopped eggplant and let this soften as well

 

6.Dice your tomatoes; don’t forget to occasionally stir the mixture in the pan

7.Add all your spices as well as the diced tomato you put aside earlier, to the saucepan

8.Stir around the mixture until the vegetables have softened, then add your mung beans as well as the water, let the mixture cook over a medium heat until the mung beans are really soft and the whole thing has turned into a mash-like consistency, this will take around 50-60 min

9.By the time the filling is finished the hollow eggplants should have been taken out of the oven and cooled down quite a bit

 

10. Fill the filling into the eggplant and then put back into your oven at 180°C for another 20 minutes or until the eggplant are completely heated through

Voila, delicious Indian inspired stuffed eggplant. They are delicious by themselves as well as with some baked sweet potatoes or just plain old basmati rice. I absolutely loved this dish, the filling was so spicy and flavourful, and it could even be eaten just like this without being filled into an eggplant. The eggplant baskets just make it look a tad more appealing, since the Dahl itself is kind of missing some prettiness otherwise.

Anyways eat it with the baskets or without, it will be delicious for sure.

 

Bisous,

Fanny the foodie