This dish will make your taste buds go crazy with pleasure. One of the biggest tricks is in smoking the eggplants by slowly cooking them in a pan. Bliss!
Entering Amina's home, it was my first try at vlogging. I had no idea of what I was getting into. I made many mistakes but loved every minute of the five hours we spent cooking eating and discussing. Below you will find one of the four recipes I collected that day and there is one word to describe this one...YUM! Amina used another word to describe her food.
What does this food mean to you?
When asked What does this food mean to you Amina gave a simple answer.....HOME!
Recipe
Ingredients:
-3 aubergines
Yogurt mix:
-few splashes of olive oil
-1 kg of natural yogurt
-splash of water
- few dashes of sea salt
-few dashes of pepper
-1 tsp of brown sugar
-1 clove of crushed garlic
Tempering
- mustard oil
-mustard seeds
- two dried red chilli peppers
- a bay leaf
Instructions
Cut the aubergines into slices around 5 mm in height. Splash the oil on a frying pan and lightly stir it around the pan. Place the aubergines on flipping them and cooking them on low heat until soft but not burnt. Like Amina said,"have a smoky taste." This will take time and if you try to rush it you will miss out on the smokey taste. Watch the video to see how.
In the meantime prepare the yogurt sauce by placing it in a medium bowl and adding the water. Mix it with a spoon. Add the garlic (grate the garlic in for better taste), add salt and pepper and sugar mixing until well incorporated and then place the smoked aubergines into this mix. For the final touches make a tempering called tarka in Urdu. To do this pour mustard oil in the bottom of a small pot (watch video) then add mustard seeds to the mustard oil and watch and listen to them popping. Add a bay leaf and dried chilli peppers and when is has cooked a bit pour over the yogurt aubergine mix.
Amina
When I was little my father tried to teach me all of this but I was at a stage when I was thinking why and now I really wished I had learned.
Amina did end up learning and it an amazing cook. Thank you Amina!