On a mission to explore Indian recipes


A friend of mine is a great cook. I think she has a magical touch, why I say that is because whatever she makes, always turns out very good. I think the fact she is a wonderful person and has an awesome happy vibe has something to do with the magic too. I'm a fan of both her and her cooking and have always wished I could cook (atleast) somewhat like her. So this last weekend, I decided to fulfill my wish and showed up at her place and asked her to supervise me. We decided to cook a recipe from a recipe book that my brother gifted me on Christmas some three years ago. I don't use that book a lot, I would often open it to get ideas for what to cook, but never followed the recipes closely. However, this time, I decided to follow every instruction in that book. After going through different recipes in that book and making sure we had all the ingredients, we decided to make 'Eggplant in mustard seed and yogurt gravy'. This is a bengali recipe and I got excited mostly because it didn't require onions and tomatoes (something that I use in almost all my cooking). Also, I've never prepared anything with mustard seed gravy, so this was something completely different that I was going to try.

I feel when it comes to cooking it is way more than merely following a recipe, there are many subtleties that the recipes fail to incorporate, these subtleties are tips or techniques of chopping, frying, timing of adding the ingredients etc. that comes only with experience. So, while the recipe book took care of the basic description, my friend filled me up with all the essential minor instructions.

Despite being very simple, I think there are certain things that needs to be borne in mind while preparing this recipe. First off, it is crucial to find fresh egg plant, fresh egg plants absorb spices well and are juicy after cooking, however stale egg plants are dry and tasteless. My friend also suggested pouring water in the mustard seed paste and then carefully removing the skin of the seeds that floats on top of water (something that wasn't mentioned in the recipe). She said it was important because the skin of the seeds are bitter. Apart from these two things, I will throw in another tip which I feel is universally applicable to any Indian recipe and that is 'patience'.Since the Indian recipes involve spices, for the flavors to blend in properly it is important to cook in slow to medium flame.

This recipe took around 45 mins (cooking+ preparation time). And before I forget, we garnished our eggplant gravy with green chillies and coriander leaves. We ate immediately after it was cooked with soft paranthaas :) I think I ate almost 10 paraanthaaz that day!

We ended the dinner perfectly with Jeni's trio! :)

Looking at the success of the recipe, I resolved to try a new recipe every weekend where I will be choosing new recipes from different states of India. Last week it was Bengal, next week I've already decided it will be Kashmir!
So looking forward to the weekends now :)  

Here's the recipe of Eggplant mustard seed and yogurt.

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