BM #109 : Week 2, Day 1
Theme : DEF – Curries

This week’s blogging theme is Curries in alphabetical order and for the alphabet E, it’s an eggplant curry. My initial plan was to make an egg curry in Instant Pot, but then this one sounded better to me.

Eggplant is not exactly a favorite veggie for most people. I don’t have eggplant haters at home, but at the same time no one requests for it too. But this curry changed that a bit. I have made this couple of times already since my husband likes it a lot.

I use Instant Pot a lot and so I ended up buying couple of cookbooks for it too. One of the books I use most is Archana Mundhe’s The Essential Indian Instant Pot cookbook and this recipe is from there. Every single recipe I tried has turned out great, so it’s a good book to invest if you have an Instant Pot and cook Indian food often. A big bonus with this recipe is that it’s not only tasty, but very very easy to put together too.

Read on for the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 8 eggplants
• 1 big onion, minced or grated
• 1 tablespoon shredded coconut
• 2 teaspoon ginger garlic paste
• 2 teaspoon coriander powder
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon jaggery or brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 cup water
• Salt to taste

Method:

1. From the round end of the eggplants, cut a ‘plus’ and cut through until you are close to the stem. Keep the stem intact so that its not cut into four pieces. Set aside.
2. In a bowl, add the finely chopped onions, coconut, ginger garlic paste, coriander powder, chili powder, garam masala, jaggery and salt as needed. Mix everything well together.
3. Carefully stuff the eggplants with the prepared mix. You will have some leftover, set it aside.
4. Turn the Saute mode in Instant Pot. Heat oil. Add the stuffed eggplants. Turn off the Instant Pot and add one cup of water to the bowl. Slowly distribute the leftover filling on top of the eggplants.
5. Switch to Manual mode for 5 minutes. You can let the pressure release naturally or do a quick release once it’s done.
6. Once the pressure is released, if the gravy is runny, gently scrape the filling on top of the eggplant and add it to the gravy. Press the Sauté button and bring everything to a boil. This helps the gravy thicken a little bit more. Serve with rice or rotis.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this Week