Your most flavorful eggplant dish
By Tali Simon | August 23, 2011
It’s funny, I never ate this much eggplant back in the States. To be fair, I also never did this much cooking in the States, but that’s because I was single and living with my family. (Though, yes, there were those weekly quiches for awhile.)
In these last nine months since our wedding, I’ve somehow stumbled upon at least a half-dozen eggplant dishes, all of which we like a lot. There’s the turkish salad that’s wonderful with challah, grilled eggplant sticks (among other veggies) in a yummy pasta recipe, dairy-loaded eggplant stacks, and this one, a bursting-with-flavor dish: Curried eggplant and chickpeas.
I’m going back and forth on whether you need a tolerance for curry to get along with this dish. Though it’s certainly very flavorful, it’s not extreme-tasting. (I tend to like lots of spices in my food, but my husband, who prefers less spicy dishes, likes the flavor here as much as I do.)
Plain brown rice or couscous makes a terrific accompaniment to this dish. Serve up a nice salad, and you’ve rounded out the meal.
What do you like to do with eggplant?
From Norene’s Healthy Kitchen
Ingredients
- 2 medium eggplants, or 6-7 cups chopped
- salt, for salting eggplant
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 large red onion
- 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 2 cups cooked, from 2/3 cup dried beans)
- 3-4 tsp curry powder
- ½ tsp ground cumin
- ½ cup cold water
- 6 Tbsp lemon juice (preferably fresh)
- 2-3 Tbsp honey, or to taste
- 2 Tbsp ketchup
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to season dish
Directions
1. Peel the eggplant (if desired) and cut into pieces about ½ an inch in size. Place in a colander and sprinkle lightly with salt. Let stand for 20-30 minutes, then rinse well and squeeze gently to remove any excess liquid and bitter juices.
2. Steam the eggplant until tender, about 10-12 minutes. Don’t overcook.
3. Heat the oil in a medium/large pot over high heat. Add the onion and saute until tender. Transfer the steamed eggplant, along with the drained chickpeas, to the pot. Mix well.
4. Add the curry powder, cumin, water, lemon juice, honey, and ketchup. Stir to combine and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.
Keeps for up the three days in the fridge. Reheats well.
2 Comments
Ahuvah Taub on September 4, 2011 at 10:24 pm.
Thanks so much for inspiring me to give veggie food a try again. I got stuck in a rut of planning dairy or meat meals. This recipe caught my eye as I love eggplant and chickpeas. Of course I am never one to follow a recipe and I rarelly ever do. However, I do like finding recipes that I can use as an inspiration and base. So of course I made some changes to this recipe. I like colour in my food so I added red and yellow pepper to this dish. I just sautted all the veggies together. I didn’t have curry on hand so I made up my own with the following spices combining sweet paprika, spicy paprika, brown coriander, chilli powder, cinnamon and turmeric. I don’t cook with ketchup so I use tomato juice instead. After the dish was done cooking I added the rice and mixed it in well. It makes my life easier when reheating leftovers and not to forget it helps get all that good sauce out of the pot. Most importantly my husband liked this dish even though he did say that it was missing chicken.
Tali Simon on September 5, 2011 at 10:33 am.
That sounds like a great adaptation. Really cool to make your own curry! I’m definitely with you on the color thing — I often find myself choosing side dishes based on what colors I don’t yet have in a meal.
As for your husband missing his chicken…well, he’s entitled.