SPICY AUBERGINES

I adore this recipe nearly as much as the one for Chicken Mulligatawny Soup. Like that recipe, this one is adapted from the book, Madhur Jaffrey`s Illustrated Indian Cookery, revised edition published by BBC Books 1994 (ISBN 0-563-37013-0) and again I have fiddled about with it! Not to worry: apparently Madhur Jaffrey got the original recipe from Shankerlal, the master chef at the Lake Palace Hotel in the city of Udaipur and I would be most surprised if she didn`t tinker about with it a bit - maybe to reduce the `spiciness` of it for English post-war palates! The great delight of the dish is that it can be eaten hot or cold. In fact, within the last 24 hours I have eaten it hot as an accompaniment to balti chicken morisa and boiled rice and also cold as an accompaniment to my delicious favourite fish cakes! It can also be eaten with salad or on toast. Madhur recommends it hot as an accompaniment to rogan josh or beef stew with a bread such as paratha, with roast lamb and boiled rice even - and cold served with cold chicken, lamb or sliced ham or on lettuce leaves. A wonderful dish!

Ingredients

• 5 cm of fresh ginger
• 10 cloves of garlic
• some aubergines; Madhur says small or large, but I say that the small ones are incomparably better because you get more skin per square inch (sorry, per square centimetre!) - and we all know where the nutrients and taste reside, don`t we! She also recommends 750g - which, she states, will make 6 servings - but I cook however much takes my fancy, usually a bit less than she recommends
• some cooking oil
• 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon of kalonji (or cumin seeds)
• 1 tin of plum tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon of ground coriander
• ½ teaspoon of ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon of salt

Method

• Finely chop the garlic and ginger, either by hand - if you have a suitable board and half crescent chopper - or by electrically blending them (perhaps also adding a little water)
• Chop the tomatoes. Now don`t tell me you have bought a tin of ready-chopped tomatoes because I have very strong feelings about this: it takes only a few seconds to chop the contents of a tin of plum tomatoes, either in a food processor (they usually come with a small container and blade for small quantities like this) or by hand if you have one of those wonderfully suitable half crescent chopping blades and boards that my son, Jonathan, bought me for Christmas once - one of the best presents I ever had! - you could even put them in a bowl and chop them singly with a knife on an ordinary chopping board - don`t do more than one at once unless you want juice all over the place - but don`t tell me that paying twice as much for a tin of tomatoes chopped by somebody else is good house-keeping economy - it isn`t - and if you are the kind of person that does that kind of thing then you are lazy and don`t deserve to read any more of my nice recipes, so go away!
• Where was I? Oh, yes: cut the aubergines into small pieces (slices, wedges, whatever!) about 2 cm thick and 5 cm long (or whatever!)
• Pour some oil into a pan and turn the heat to moderately hot
• When the oil is hot, fry the aubergines pieces in batches in a single layer, turning them once and letting them become reddish-brown on each side; when each batch is cooked, remove the pieces and strain them in a sieve over a bowl
• You may need to add more oil occasionally, but I try not to, because of my high cholesterol level, which is another reason why I prefer the small aubergines: they have more skin and it seems to absorb less oil than the flesh - at least that`s what I tell my doctor!
• I would strongly recommend now putting the aubergines on one side so that the majority of the oil has a chance to strain off - again this gives my cholesterol level a chance; indeed, I usually let them strain over night and rejoice exceedingly when I see the great rivers of oil that are in the bowl and won`t be in my blood-stream!
• Whenever you are ready to take the plunge, make sure your pan does have some oil in it (!) and turn the heat to medium
• When the oil is hot, put in the fennel seeds and kalonji (or cumin seeds); after a few seconds in which the fennel seeds darken slightly, put in the chopped tomatoes (chopped by you, that is, no one else!), the chopped ginger and garlic (Oh, all right: I confess: I have been known in the past to buy jars of ready-chopped ginger and garlic, but I much prefer these days to buy my ginger and garlic in bulk and to freeze them. I freeze the garlic as peeled cloves and chop it when it has thawed - it is remarkably convenient - and the ginger I freeze in little balls of choppings - they can easily be unfreezed in the microwave and taste perfectly ok - try it. BUT DON`T BUY READY-CHOPPED TOMATOES UNLESS YOU WANT TO MAKE ME CROSS!***); add also the coriander, turmeric, cayenne pepper and salt
• Stir the mixture and cook it for 5-6 minutes. Madhur Jaffrey recommends "breaking the tomato pieces with the back of a slotted spoon" at this point. You see, she doesn`t buy ready-chopped tomatoes!
• Increase the heat slightly and stir and cook the mixture until it is of the thickness you like
• Now add the aubergine pieces and spoon the sauce over them, being careful not to damage the cooked aubergine more than you can bear!
• Continue to cook the food for about 5 - 10 minutes, stirring occasionally and very gently - more lifting and replacing than stirring! - until the aubergine pieces are soft. They may need the shorter or longer time, but they taste better overcooked than undercooked! It depends how thick the pieces are, how high the heat is, what day of the week it is and what colour your grandmother`s hair was!
• Remove the aubergines and either serve hot or let them cool and serve cold. The advantage of letting them get cold is that you can then easily remove some more oil (oh, the torments of a high cholesterol level sufferer!) - I store them in the `fridge in a shallow dish propped up at one end at a slight angle on something else and this helps the oil to run to one side so that I can easily spoon it away later. The aubergines are perfectly good when re-heated, too.

*** Actually, within the last few hours of updating this section in the early morning of Wednesday 14 May 2003, I have been speaking to a great friend of mine, Phil Hendy, who has a flat in Chester and he assures me that tins of chopped tomatoes with herbs are available at Sainsbury`s supermarket in Chester for the remarkably good price of 11p. Now if this is true - and Phil is an English gentleman whose word is to be trusted without question - then this is a very good reason for us all moving to Chester to take advantage of this bargain. Phil says he uses the herby tomatoes when he makes chilli con carne, but I expect that they would do equally as well in this recipe. So forget all I said about chopping tomatoes; go to Chester and stock up!