Eggplant Stir-Fry Mash at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
Eggplant stir-fry mash is called baingan bharta on the menu at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California.
This vegan (food made with no animal products) dish a little tricky to make at home. You have to char and fully cook the eggplant before being able to mix it with a tomato and onion based curry. I always get this dish at a restaurant for this reason.
I consulted hebbars.com for a recipe for baingan (eggplant) bharta that is similar to what Avatar Indian Grill does for its version of the dish. Once the eggplant is fully cooked and cooled, the skin is peeled off and the interior of the eggplant is mashed.
After this is done, you heat oil in a sauce pan and add cumin, dried red chili, ginger, and garlic and sauté these spices along with chopped onion. Once the onion begins to shrink, you add chili powder and coriander powder.
When the spices become fragrant, you add the eggplant mash and chopped tomatoes and cook the mixture till the tomatoes are soft and mushy. You let the vegetables cook down and add garam masala (curry powder) before serving.
Avatar Indian Grill differs from this recipe a bit by mashing everything down and then adding peas to the curry.
Baingan bharta is usually paired with rice. The peas, a pulse, combine with rice, a grain, to form a vegetarian protein combination according to vegetarians.
The result regardless of scientific claims is delicious, especially if you eat some naan flatbread studded with licorice tasting fennel seeds with it.
Baingan bharta is from the Punjab region in northwestern India that crosses over into Pakistan as well.
I eat vegan foods in case of any disruption to meat supply that could happen due to disruption to constant temperature for safe meat handling and preservation such as electrical blackouts that can affect butchering facilities and stores.
I am happily going through the vegan menu items at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California to learn about foods that have withstood the blistering heat on the Indian subcontinent for millennia.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
