Baingan Bhaja | Begun Bhaja | Spicy Roasted Eggplants : Vegan Dish

The wait is over. My parents & in-laws landed here last week & all of them are enjoying in their own way. I cooked many new dishes to impress my mom-in-law, but failed in each attempt. As I am not used to cooking for 8 people at a time, I used to always go wrong while adding salt or tamarind. My MIL, being an excellent cook used to find the dishes not that tasty. My mom used to praise me (as expected, she is happy that I'm cooking so many new dishes). I kept on waiting for an opportunity to impress my MIL. She is not that fond of North Indian dishes & I have not yet mastered Udupi(South Canara) cuisine that she loves to eat.

Just as any other day, I decided to cook a bengali dish, Baingan Bhaja along with Punarpuli Saaru/Rasam. I had not seen her prepare punarpuli/kokum rasam & was almost sure that she would be captivated. When I presented the dish, the expression was ulta(opposite). All of them thoroughly enjoyed eating baingan bhaja. I cooked baingan bhaja using long purple eggplants & all of them relished that. Finally, I impressed all of them with this bhaja & especially my mom-in-law. (he he, I thought I would impress her with rasam but did with bhaja, whatever it be, I'm happy that I impressed them)

I have asked her the authentic recipe for punarpuli rasam & she is cooking the rasam tonite for all of us :) You guys have to wait for my coming posts for the authentic MIL's punarpuli saaru.

Ingredients for baingan bhaja

Long Purple eggplants or big rounded eggplants : 2 nos

Oil: 1 tbsp for each brinjal

Salt: According to taste

Chilli Powder: 1 tsp

Amchur Powder: 1/2 tsp
Chiroti rawa/small rawa or rice flour: 3 tbsp

Method:

• Slice the eggplants & soak them in water for 15-20minutes.
• Meantime, mix all the spice powders(amchur powder, chilli powder) including rawa or rice flour & salt.
• Remove the slices from water & pat them dry.
• Heat a griddle. When hot, add few drops of oil.
• Dip both the sides of the eggplant slices in the spice powder mixture. Place these slices on the griddle, add few drops of oil to each slice & cook both sides on a medium heat for about 3-5 mins. Flip the slices and repeat
• Serve it as a side dish for rice or roti. We love to eat our bhaja with khichdi. 

Notes:

(Updated on 17th May 2016). Instead of eggplants, you can use zucchini to make spicy roasted zucchini. It tastes awesome. 

Spicy Roasted Zucchini