Remember how I love eggplant? There’s something absolutely delicious about how slimy it can be. It becomes soft and mushy and very mild. Different kinds, especially the long, thinner purple Asian ones, aren’t as bitter as the regular pear-shaped ones. Slimmer is not always better, but it seems that in this metaphor the larger ones are bitter about their bottoms.
All joking aside, there was still a fair bit of lamb fat in the skillet after sauté-ing my potatoes, and I hate letting things that great go to waste. So I decided to sauté the eggplant that I’d boiled whole (got the idea from a Vietnamese recipe blog when researching pho) in what was left of the fat. Well the eggplant sure sucked up the leftovers! It actually started to burn. So that’s why Indian and Chinese eggplant dishes are so luscious…they need a ridiculous amount of oil or fat to keep the eggplant from sticking to the wok or pot!
The result? The eggplant was bland, even with the oil. Only the texture was different, becoming a bit more slimy (which I actually like. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, like oysters) with the additional oil. I did a comparison with some un-sautéd, boiled eggplant to be sure. So what I ended up doing was adding a bit of chaat masala for flavour. It was a cheat baigan bharta, but the mango powder ended up being delicious and there was more than enough salt in the masala to bring out the flavour. Now I have leftover eggplant for amazing sandwiches. I’ll just sprinkle on a bit of chaat masala, add a few more vegetables and some puréed chickpeas, and die happy.
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