Baingan Bharta

Ingredients

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• 1 large Aubergine
• ½ cup Onion
• 1 cup Tomatoes
• 6 clove Garlic
• 1 Green Chilli
• ¼ tsp Red Chilli Powder
• 1.5 Tbsp vegetable broth 🛒
• 1 Tbsp Coriander Leaves
• as required salt

Method

1. Rinse the baingan (eggplant or aubergine) in water.
2. Pat dry with a kitchen napkin.
3. Apply some vegetable broth all over and keep it for roasting on an open flame.
4. You can also grill the baingan or roast in the oven. (WFPB: grill without oiling; the food releases when seared)
5. But then you won't get the smoky flavor of the baingan.
6. Keep the eggplant turning after a 2 to 3 minutes on the flame, so that its evenly cooked.
7. You could also embed some garlic cloves in the baingan and then roast it.
8. Roast the aubergine till its completely cooked and tender. (WFPB: roast on parchment without oil; mist with broth if sticking)
9. With a knife check the doneness.
10. The knife should slid easily in aubergines without any resistance.
11. Remove the baingan and immerse in a bowl of water till it cools down.
12. You can also do the dhungar technique of infusing charcoal smoky flavor in the baingan.
13. This is an optional step.
14. Use natural charcoal for this method.
15. Heat a small piece of charcoal on flame till it becomes smoking hot and red.
16. Make small cuts on the baingan with a knife.
17. Place the red hot charcoal in the same plate where the roasted aubergine is kept.
18. Add a few drops of vegetable broth on the charcoal.
19. The charcoal would begin to smoke.
20. As soon as smoke begins to release from the charcoal, cover the entire plate tightly with a large bowl.
21. Allow the charcoal smoke to get infused for 1 to 2 minutes.
22. The more you do, the more smoky the baingan bharta will become.
23. I just keep for a minute.
24. Alternatively, you can also do this dhungar method once the baingan bharta is cooked, just like the way we do for Dal Tadka.
25. Peel the skin from the roasted and smoked eggplant.
26. Chop the cooked eggplant finely or you can even mash it.
27. In a kadai or pan, heat vegetable broth. Then add finely chopped onions and garlic.
28. water-sauté the onions till translucent. Don't brown them.
29. Add chopped green chilies and saute for a minute.
30. Add the chopped tomatoes and mix it well.
31. Bhuno (water-sauté) the tomatoes till the vegetable broth starts separating from the mixture.
32. Now add the red chili powder. Stir and mix well.
33. Add the chopped cooked baingan.
34. Stir and mix the chopped baingan very well with the onion­tomato masala mixture.
35. Season with salt. Stir and saute for some more 4 to 5 minutes more.
36. Finally stir in the coriander leaves with the baingan bharta or garnish it with them.
37. Serve Baingan Bharta with phulkas, rotis or chapatis.
38. It goes well even with bread, toasted or grilled bread and plain rice or jeera rice.

About the ingredients

Aubergine Solanum melongena

Botanical/culinary mismatch flagged: eggplant is a berry botanically, used as a vegetable.

Onion Allium cepa

Bulb vegetable, eaten raw or cooked. Whole minimally-processed plant food; 'organic' refers to cultivation only. WFPB-canonical.

Tomatoes Solanum lycopersicum

Whole fruit of the tomato plant (botanically a berry, culinary vegetable). 'Organic' denotes a farming method, not a distinct ingredient. Raw whole fruit, rich in lycopene, vitamin C, potassium. WFPB-canonical.

Garlic Allium sativum

Garlic itself is canonical, but extract denotes a concentrated/isolated derivative outside the whole-food canon. Marketed as natural/healthy supplement, hence mistaken-as-WFPB flag.

Green Chilli Capsicum annuum

Fresh green (unripe) chili pepper, the New Mexico/Hatch-style pod widely roasted and chopped in Southwestern cooking. Whole fruit of Capsicum annuum, eaten skin and flesh. Minimally processed (roasted/chopped). WFPB-canonical whole vegetable-fruit.

Red Chilli Powder Capsicum annuum

Chili powder: in US usage, a ground blend of dried chili peppers (Capsicum annuum) with cumin, oregano, garlic powder, and often salt; elsewhere it means pure ground dried chili. New World crop, central to post-Columbian global cuisine. Sun-dried and milled whole pods. Canonical WFPB (blends may add salt).

vegetable broth

A salt-free, all-purpose vegetable broth. Onion, carrots, celery, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, kombu, parsley.

Coriander Leaves Coriandrum sativum

Fresh leaves of coriander (Coriandrum sativum, Apiaceae), known as cilantro; a culinary herb used fresh. Whole leaf, no processing. Low calorie, provides vitamin K, A, C and antioxidants. WFPB-canonical whole herb.

salt NaCl

Crystalline sodium chloride, harvested by evaporating seawater or mining rock-salt deposits. Used as seasoning and preservative since antiquity—central to trade and food economies for millennia. A mineral, not a plant food, and a sodium isolate; noncanonical to WFPB.