Vankaya (Brinjal) Pachadi

This past year I’ve been mostly AWOL from my online presence for a lot of reasons. And getting back to blogging is something i wish to focus on this year. A huge development that did take place was the growth of my kitchen garden. I became a part of a group of gardeners here in Bangalore who encouraged to grow-what-you-eat-and-eat-what-you-grow! My focus is to be healthy, and a great way of doing that is to eat organic foods. Adn the best way I found to achieve that, is to grow organic!! 🙂

Today’s recipe is made using vankaya that I grow in my garden!

There are 2 varieties of vankaya pachadi in Telugu cuisine. One is the way I will describe below. The other is one that Telugu cuisine shares with other Indian regions and is called baingan-ka-bharta. Hopefully, I’ll get around to featuring that too soon!

While baingan ka bharta relies on the violet colored brinjals, this pachadi can be made with any variety. That is a blessing, given that my kitchen garden doesn’t feature the violet ones (yet). What I do have are these 2 kinds of brinjal:

Veggies from my garden!

The picture was taken along with other produce from my garden that day. I’ve used the single big whitish vankaya in this recipe.

So here goes!

Vankaya pachadi

 

Ingredients:

• Brinjal/eggplant/vankaya – 1 large (or abt 100 gm)
• green chillies – 10-12
• red chillies – 5
• Tamarind – about 1/2 lemon size (approximately)
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/2 tsp
• Cooking oil – 2 tbsp
• Seasoning: mustard seeds (aavalu) – 1 tsp, urad dal (mina pappu) – 1 tsp, fenugreek seeds (menthulu) 1/3tsp, asafoetida  (inguva) – 1tsp

Method:

• In a lidded saucepan, pour in the oil and place the uncut vankaya in it. The saucepan needs to be deep enough for the lid to set properly after planing the vankaya.
• Keep turning the vankaya time to time to ensure the whole thing in braised. The skin will seem to split a bit, or at least part from the body. When lightly pressed, the skin will fold into the vankaya.
• Remove from the saucepan, retaining the oil. Set the vankaya aside for cooling in the final serving dish.
• Add the seasoning into the oil. Once the mustard seeds start to pop, add the red and green chillies and let them stay in the oil till all the chillies start changing color.
• Take off the flame immediately and add the washed tamarind, turmeric and salt, and set aside to cool.
• Once cool, grind the seasoning into a fine paste.
• Peel the skin off the cooled vankaya. This will actually peel off easily if the vankaya has been braised properly.
• Mash the peeled vankaya lightly. You may opt to keep pieces or mash the whole thing finely.
• Mix the seasoning paste into the mashed vankaya welland set aside for some time.

The pachadi is best served with hot rice and ghee! 🙂