Monday, August 25, 2014

Baked Sambhar Powder Small Eggplants



Ingredients

Small Purple Eggplants : about 12 (small as in closer to egg-size, try to get all of them of same size for uniform baking)
Sambhar Powder - 8 tsp
Olive Oil - 1/4 cup
Salt - 1 tsp (or as per taste)
Pepper - 1 tsp
Garlic - chopped into tiny pieces - 8 cloves

Method
Give two diagonal cuts on the Eggplant leaving the stem intact.
Mix all the ingredients except Eggplant together to prepare the oil-spice mix.
Place the oil-spice mix using a small spoon into the Eggplant cuts.

Place them lying on their side in a baking pan lined with Aluminium foil.
Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees F.
Bake for 15 mins
Reduce heat to 375 degrees F.
Bake for 10 mins
Note - Keep a close watch since oven temperature and cooking time may vary.
Poke with a knife and make sure the Eggplant is cooked.
Take it out and cover with an Aluminium foil to continue cooking and let the juice flow.
Serve hot.

It was a good side-dish with Biryani. It is so easy and quick to prepare that I will be making it more often for sure. This was definitely something I just came up with combining a number of baked Eggplant dishes as inspiration for this Indian-taste twist. It will be a good side-dish for Rice-dal and Chapatti for sure. Enjoy!



2 comments:

Poonkodi said...

Like the new look veg receives. I have tried this (by slow roasting instead of baking). The challenge was the size of the cooking pan and keeping the brinjals intact.

Pragyan said...

I know what you mean. Picking a pot size that perfectly holds all the eggplants close together helps a lot. :)