Egg plant - Roasted vankaye pachi pulusu

1 Large Eggplant
2 Onions
4 – 5 Green Chilies
Small lemon sized Tamarind
Few Curry Leaves
Coriander
1 tsp Sesame Powder
½ tsp Jaggery: Optional

Wash and dry eggplant. Spray PAM all over the egg plant and evenly spread using fingers. Place Aluminium foil in the burner slot so, clean up will be easier. The water in the eggplant will cook and drip down. Roast on medium/low flame, turning on all sides. Remove let cool and peel the skin and discard. Transfer the soft flesh into a bowl.

Pick long, thin green chilies from what you have and coat them with oil using the tips your finger. Roast them on low/medium flame, turning them on all sides using the stem of the chilies or tongs. Remove, let cool and mash them with your hands (remove seeds if you don’t like it spicy). Suite you taste accordingly.

Chop onions into small pieces. Make tamarind juice with the tamarind.
Dry fry sesame seeds and make powder. This is sesame powder.

Take 3 tsp of oil in a small skillet and make tadka with ½ tsp jeera, ½ tsp mustard seeds, few fenugreek seeds, hing, and red chili and curry leaves. Once it is done, add chopped onions and fry till the onion turns translucent. Then add a tsp of sesame powder and fry for a few minutes.

To the vessel with the egg plant flesh add tamarind juice (raw, the above tadka, smashed green chilies, salt, turmeric, jaggery and chopped coriander (liberally). Mix well, preferably using hands and squeezing, so, the taste of all the items evenly spreads into the tamarind juice.

The roasted egg plant, chilies, tamarind juice, soft flavor of sesame powder, sweet of jaggery all combine to form an excellent taste.

This is an excellent side dish with rice and appadam, specially rice and kandi podi (from my previous blog in Podis/Powders) and oil.