Receta Charred Eggplpant And Peas, A Perfect Barbecue Side Dish.
Back where I come from when stuff gets charred and there's not a barbecue involved, it's not a good thing. Charring usually involved opening a lot of windows, smoke alarms, yelling and calling the local take out.."Don't Cook Tonight, Call Chicken Delight!"
The idea of deliberately charring something may seem scary, but believe me it's a basic of many sorts of cuisines. Deliberately charring under controlled conditions is a technique. In the Indian kitchen this is called charchari, and combined with boiling and sauteing it is the finishing touch that will give your vegetables a tasty, open-fire-cooked punch.
Vegetables are added to a pan with butter or ghee, crushed spices, and some liquid, boiled for a bit, then fried and finally charred carefully!
A lot of different vegetables can be prepared like this, but I happened to picked up some great baby eggplants from Lunita Farm at Saturdays' Farmers Market at the Sonoma Community Center . I decided to make charred eggplant and peas. Here's what to do.
Tiempo de Prep: | Indian |
Tiempo para Cocinar: | Raciónes: 6 |
Ingredientes
|
|
Direcciones
- Chop about 1 lb of eggplant into 1 inch pieces.
- Place it in the bottom of a deep skillet or kadhai
- Dot the eggplant with 4 Tbs of unsalted butter cut into little pieces.
- Grind together:
- 1 Tbs of coriander seeds
- 1/2 Tbs of cumin seeds
- mix that with :
- 3 or 4 pieces of fresh cilantro
- 1 large whole serrano chili (if you want to get wild you can add up to 3 of them!)
- and sprinkle the whole thing over the chopped eggplant.
- Add in 2 cups of water.
- Bring the whole thing to a boil.
- Boil it for about 3 to 4 minutes then partially cover the pan and lower the heat a bit. Cook it for about 30 minutes.
- Check it every now and then and make sure the water isn't cooking down too quickly. The idea here is
- the eggplant should cook down.
- When the water is nearly all gone toss in 1 cup of frozen peas.
- Note: if you're using fresh peas put them in at the beginning along with the eggplant.
- Keep cooking the eggplant, shake the pan occasionally so things don't stick, and cook it down until the eggplant starts to form a crust on the bottom and begins to char.
- Take the pan off the heat and let it rest for about 4 minutes or so, then stir it around gently mixing the charred bottom crust in with the rest of the vegetables.
- This is a great and "meaty" dish for Meatless Mondays. Add some rice, chapatti, whatever, and you're in business. The mildly charred taste gives a nice, smokey flavor to the eggplant balanced by the peas.
- Other vegetables can be done in this fashion, it's not just for eggplant. I'm going to be trying this technique with potatoes and green beans and anything else I can find at the Farmers' Market. It gives a great cook-out flavor to a simple pan-sauteed dish and all it takes is about 30 minutes.
- The thing I love about this dish is that when people ask "is something burning?" you can say "damn straight it is!"