Eggplant or Aubergine is an extremely popular vegetable It is so popular and tasty that it is very fondly know as the king of vegetables. While Aubergine is a British name for the vegetable, in India it is called Baingan.
It has a lot of health benefits too , this purple Glossy vegetable is grown in different shapes, there are special dishes made out of each of these type. While the big balloon shaped Brinjal is used for making Baingan Bharata , an awesome dish made with slowly smoked Brinjal.
I also have a special starter recipe with this huge beauties! you can make the unique Eggplant Pizza, which is super yummy and healthy too. You can get the recipes for both these dishes by clicking on them.
Bagara Baingan is different from Stuffed Baingan. Everything about these 2 dishes is different. So please do not get confused.
The dish we are going to make today is the Bagara Baingan. It is one of the most popular on a a wedding menu. It is cooking in a super rich gravy and the fried eggplants add so much to the taste. The dish you see in Weddings is floating in oil! but we will make it a bit healthy. there is deep frying but no floating in oil.
One thing you have to keep in mind for this Bagara Baingan is the size of the Brinjal, to make life easy i will break this recipe into 3 parts.
What do we need to make the Bagara Baingan?
- Eggplants
- Onion
- Oil for deep frying
- Sesame
- Groundnuts
- Kuskus
- Dry coconut
- Cumin seeds
- Cumin powder
- Fennel
- Coriander powder
- Turmeric Powder
- Tamarind paste / water.
How to make the Bagara Baingan?
Step 1: Is to wash the Brinjals and slit them, do not cut them into pieces. Just slit from the top like a flower. and deep fry them.
Step 2: Deep fry some Sliced onions cut as juliennes. These are called golden onions.
Step 3: Let us make the base of the curry. The base is a thick and rich gravy made out of 4 super rich ingredients. Groundnuts, Sesame, KusKus and Dry coconut. The ratio of the groundnut should be more than all other ingredients.
In a pan, dry roast the Groundnuts, remove the outer cover by crushing them in your palm and separate the brown cover (different from the shell). Now dry roast the sesame seeds and kuskus and the dry coconut one after another and grind a fine powder out of this.
Add water to it and make a nice lump free paste. Let us call it the groundnut and sesame paste.
Step 4: Make green chilly paste and get the rest of the ingredients together.
In a pan heat 2-3 spoons of oil , once the oil is hot add some jeera, wait for it to splutter, add the Fennel seeds add the Curry leafs and the green chilly paste.
I use a paste , you can use whole green chilly as well. Add the dry masala powders to this , chilly, turmeric, Cumin powder , Coriander powder and a small piece of Jaggery. Add a little bit of water to avoid the masala to burn. Fry this for a little time.
Step 5: Add the Groundnut sesame paste and cook for 3-4 minutes; Add the Tamarind paste and mix well add salt at this point. This is the right time to check the spice levels. And now! it is time to add the Deep fried Eggplants and mix them slowly and gently.
Move this to a serving bowl and garnish with the brown onions. That is it!!! our Hyderabadi Bagara Baingan is ready!!
PLease look at the 2 other Eggplant recipes i have shared, those are yummy and easy to make. Both the dishes are with the bigger Eggplants.
Baingan Bharata , an awesome dish made with slowly smoked Brinjal on a gas top. If you have a tandoor at home then please use that to smoke your eggplant the result will enhance the taste for sure.
I also have a special starter recipe with this huge beauties! you can make the unique Eggplant Pizza, which is super yummy and healthy too. You can get the recipes for both these dishes by clicking on them.
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