Something New

I don't know about you, but I have a number of meals that I make frequently. I swear we have chili at least once a week. And Dave and I are both ok with that. Chili is awesome.

Sometimes I change up my tried and true recipes, I'll add a little something or look up a new recipe. And sometimes, I go completely out of my comfort zone and make something totally new.

Enter Indian food. Never had it, ever. But a few of the nutrition/cooking blogs I read just RAVE about it, so I thought, why (the heck) not try something completely new and foreign.

Baingan bharta, or eggplant curry is a dish common in the Punjab region of India/Pakistan.  Apparently the different regions of India have all have very different types of food, who knew.

This is the recipe I used
(from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 tomato, diced

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1 fresh jalapeno chile pepper, finely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 bunch cilantro, finely chopped


Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2.	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.
3.	Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Mix in cumin seeds and onion. Cook and stir until onion is tender.
4.	Mix ginger garlic paste, curry powder, and tomato into the saucepan, and cook about 1 minute. Stir in yogurt. Mix in eggplant and jalapeno pepper, and season with salt. Cover, and cook 10 minutes over high heat. Remove cover, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking about 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro to serve. Sorry for the less-than-stellar picture. What I changed: First of all, I crock-potted this beast.  I'm in love with my crockpot right now, probably because its so dang cold and humid here.  One hour high, and then on low five ish hours.  So I just peeled and chopped the eggplant and threw it in the pot.  BTW, how weird are eggplants.  I used ground cumin,1 tsp chopped garlic and 1/2 tsp of ginger and Greek yogurt. If this would have been any other type of cuisine(something I've made or actually eaten before) I probably would've made some more changes, but I decided to try this recipe as closely as possible for my first Indian experience.  I also made naan, a slightly puffy, grilled, pita type thing.  Here is the recipe I used, also from allrecipes.com. Final Product and Review: Dave and I LOVED the naan, we were stuffing out faces with it right off the grill, so I made some brown rice to put the eggplant curry on, just in case we ate all the naan.  These naan are too thin for my taste, I found that I liked them a little thicker, and puffier, but all the comments on allrecipes said to "make sure" you rolled the dough out enough, I think maybe I just got a little carried away.  I also had to chill the dough instead of rolling and grilling immediately so that might have factored in as well.     Honestly? I kinda think it looks like barf, smells a little like barf (with a whole bunch of curry).  Not really a fan, we kept taking small bites and then looking at each other to see if we were going to keep eating.  I didn't hate it.  I just didn't like it. Oh well, I found out I really LOVE naan, so I'll be making that again.  If you like Indian food and all the curry, I won't hold it against you :) Hope its nice where you are :)