Dry roast:
- 1 cup peanuts - roast them, when they are cooled, rub and remove the skins
- 1 cup sesame seeds - dry roast them
Other Ingredients
- 8 to 10 dried red chillies
- One tablespoon of coriander seeds
- Half teaspoon of cumin
- 4 cloves, one small piece of cinnamon stick
- 5 to 6 fenugreek seeds (menthulu)(They taste bitter so limit the number)
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- Tamarind - Soak key-lime size tamarind in half cup of water and microwave it for about 15 to 30 seconds. Let the water cool down and squeeze the tamarind to get the paste.
Make a tight paste:
- Grind all of the above ingredients to a fine, smooth paste.
- You have to stuff this paste into brinjals so while grinding, under any circumstances, do not add water.
- Take this paste onto a plate and divide it into two portions.
- One is for stuffing and the other half is for sauce/gravy.
Method
- Thoroughly wash and dry the green brinjals.
- Remove the stems of brinjals. If you want, keep the stems.
- Take each green brinjal and on the end, opposite of stem, make a plus shape slit towards stem side but not all the way through (one vertical and one horizontal slit).
- Fill up the plus shape slit (gap) with stuffing.
Cooking:
- Do the popu or tadka(toasting the black mustard seeds and cumin in one teaspoon of oil).
- Add half of the peanut-sesame paste that was kept aside and half to one glass of water and one teaspoon of turmeric.
- Mix them up thoroughly without any lumps.
- Make the gravy/sauce more on the thin side or watery.
- Taste it, add salt, red chilli powder and tamarind paste if needed.
- I also add jaggery, very tiny amount to the gravy (making it mildly sweet).
- Arrange the stuffed brinjals neatly in the gravy, slit side up.
- Cover and cook them until the green brinjals are very tender to touch.
- I pressure-cook them until one whistle on medium low heat.
- After the whistle sound, I immediately and slowly release the pressure from the valve by lifting the weight.
No comments:
Post a Comment